BJ 



2.1 a I 







1 






















■ 






1 




^^^^^^^^^^^nHTr 


^P 




^|Bli 


III 










■■ 




^^^^^^ 


jiHI 



ill 



tIfJtH 



111.11 



;5; i:;ii'Mrti:n;uM| 



liiliP 






liii 



t;;l;i3HUKMU>i{;U>>n?;^?;»;H!>i 



t 



;;inn:Ml!nf!!:l! 




M»»ii: 






■ii: 






■1'^ 






RHP: 






mht 








Book. ^§ 5 



Copyright)]". 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



u 



\> 



ART OF 
CONVERSATION 



AND 



IMPROMPTU SPEECH 



A SHORT MANUAL OF PRACTICE 



BY 
HELEN SHERRY 






3 J > ^. 



SOCIAL CULTURE PUBLISHING CO. 

Chicago, III. 

1902 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Gowt« RtOWVED 

OCT. Vf 1902 

^ CnPVT»IOHT ENTWY 

CLASS 0. XXa Na 

i o ^ ^ 5 
COPY B. 



^4 

V op 



Copyright, 1902, 

By 

Helen Sherry. 



CONTENTS. 

CONVERSATION : 

Chapter I — Definition 21 

Chapter II — Synonyms 29 

Chapter III — Antonyms. 34 

Chapter IV — Alternation of Parts of Speech 36 

Chapter V — Vocabulary 38 

Chapter VI — Analysis of Wit and Humor as Language 

Discipline. 47 

Chapter VII — Imagination 61 

Chapter VIII — Courtesy 78 

Chapter IX — The Evolution of Colloquy 81 

IMPROMPTU SPEECH: 

Narration 103 

Dreams 105 

Persons and Character 108 

Special Objects and Phenomena 110 

Debate ^ 115 

Discussion 117 

Book Reviews 119 

Reference to Recent Verse 121 

Allusion 122 

Drill in Public Speaking 129 

Remarks 158 



PREFACE. 



After perusing my manuscript, my friend asked, with 
that reckless yielding to impulse, which is the privilege of 
social intimacy: "What are you going to do with it?'' 

''Why, publish it and sell it, of course. Then it will be 
introduced in all clubs and drawing rooms, and in all the 
schools in the country, public and private/' 

''You are very sanguine,'' rejoined my friend, coldly. 

"Why, don't you believe in the pedagogic value of my 
system?" 

"I have believed in it longer than you have. Twenty 
years ago, while reading Disraeh's 'Lothair,' I came across 
a passage in which one of the characters observed that the 
moderns were inferior to the ancients, intellectually and 
aesthetically, chiefly because they read much and conversed 
little, while with the latter the practice was reversed. Edu- 



6 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

cation in Athens was all oral, objective, concrete. The phil- 
osophers talked; the poets read their poems aloud in the 
streets ; the buildings, the statues, the pictures, all addressed 
the senses of the man as well as his understanding. The fe- 
sult of such education was eminently aesthetic and social. 
Our mental training, consisting of cabinet study, individual 
research, reading and writing, is subjective, solitary and 
savage, and tends, unfortunately, to enhance our congenital 
and already too great incapacity for social life on higher in- 
tellectual and aesthetic planes. I then saw, as never before, 
that a system of social culture was the great desideratum of 
our education.'' 

"Well, then," I began— 

"Ah, but," interrupted my friend, "it's not a question of 
what you or I think of the needs of our fellowmen. What 
they think is the main factor to be taken into account in esti- 
mating the chances of your practical success in the publica- 
tion of your booklet. You're surely not doing this for your 
health?" 

"No, but for the health of my countrymen. If my little 
work has merit, will it not be recognized ?" 

"As, in my quality of author, I am tolerably w^ell ac- 
quainted with the romantic history of rejected manuscripts, 
I can assure you that, while the merit of a work certainly en- 



Preface. 7 

hances its chances of acceptance and of sale, it does not by 
any means ensure either/' 

"Give me all your reasons/' 

''Well, put yourself in the publisher's place. Expenses 
must be paid and, while merit may be postulated as a pre- 
requisite, yet his final attitude towards the enterprise will be 
mainly determined by another consideration, i. e., the sala- 
bility. That is business, you know." 

"I don't feel barred by that argument. My book will 
sell." 

''That remains to be seen. It has certainly better chances 
of sale today than it would have had ten or even five years 
ago. But you are addressing a public of educators, and you 
know what Prof. Blackie said of teachers — that they are the 
most unteachable of all classes.' " 

"That may be true of the rank and file. But superin- 
tendents, principals, and all those who are invested with the 
power of introducing reforms, surely these have their high 
office sufficiently at heart to investigate the claim of one who 
proposes a new and valuable idea in education." 

"Of course, they are all conscientious according to their 
lights and the bias of their temperaments, which inclines 
them to emphasize, one, this thing, and the other that. All 
of them are proceeding on a considerable basis of right rea- 



8 Ar'J' of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

son, but each has only one small ray of truth withm the range 
of his vision, and, in most cases, seems to think that the 
triumph of his claims involves the defeat of the claims of 
others. If there could be a little more hospitality shown by 
educators to ideas that are foreign to their own trend of 
thought, a happier future would be ensured for those who 
are offering valuable contributions to educational method. 
Do you know anything of the history of educational re- 
forms up to date?'' 

''Alas, yes ! It is melancholy enough for the most part. 
But, among the improvements of the public mind in our 
day is a more liberal point of view. People are more ready 
to listen to new ideas. I believe that every honest teacher 
who reads me will be convinced that my scheme of language 
study is excellent.'' 

''But to convince themselves of that your public would 
have to test it for themselves, and the universal cry is that 
there is no room in the already overcrowded curriculum for 
experiments." 

"O ; I have groaned under the tyranny of the curriculum. 
Besides the intrinsic merit of my idea, it has the advantage 
of illustrious authority. Sir Humphrey Davy says : 'Lan- 
guage is not only a vehicle of thought — it is a great and effi- 
cie'nt instrument of thinking.' Now, this sentence alone 



Preface. 9 

should long ago have aroused the eager curiosity of all teach- 
ers who read it. That which is an instrument of thinking 
certainly teaches one to think. Is not this the immemorial 
desideratum of the schools? It is very easy to refer glibly 
to teaching the young idea how to shoot, but what true teach- 
er does not feel that that is the one elusive thing in all his 
aims and purposes ? To combine ideas and perceptions into 
the product called thought is the most delicate of all tasks, 
difficult to achieve for oneself, and still more difficult to im- 
part to others. The exercises in definition and in the dis- 
crimination of synonyms alone accomplish this. I discovered 
that what Sir Humphrey Davy meant was that straining the 
power of the mind to achieve expression accurate enough 
to meet the exigencies of scientific thought actually in- 
creased many times the power of thought itself. That is 
the golden reward of conscientious expression. He who 
strives to clothe the thought he has j ast acquired in perfectly 
fitting garments of expression, acquires thereby sufficient ad- 
ditional vigor of faculty immediately thereupon to conceive 
a new thought. This, however, was only the discovery of 
a fact. The task remained of making this fact the principle 
of a practical scheme of language study. The difficulty lay 
in ascertaining what thoughts the pupil needed to express. 
This was, in the ordinary course of Hfe, revealed only as ac- 



10 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

casion disclosed the necessity of conveying what was going 
on in the mind. If adequate terms failed to present them- 
selves when summoned by the emergency, there was nothing 
to do but to record a failure and pass on to new emergencies 
that were followed by new failures, thus making of human 
speech an almost unbroken series of verbal blunders. It 
soon became clear that the only solution of the problem lay 
in factitiously procuring opportunity for expression. Just 
at that moment I made another discovery, namely, that the 
faculty of conceiving and entertaining ideas far outstripped 
that of expressing these ideas. The power of expression 
halted far behind that of conception, so that consciousness 
teemed with unexpressed thoughts that waited only for the 
ministry of language to clothe and send them out into the 
world. Now, my perplexity, on being called upon to define 
words whose meaning I well know, had disclosed this fact to 
me, and I now availed myself of it to frame a scheme of ex- 
ercises that should procure for the student of language the 
opportunity of bringing into play his faculty of verbal ex- 
pression. Four years' experience has convinced me of the 
supreme value of this exercise as a stimulant of mental pow- 
er. If it be true, as is universally conceded, that the test of 
the value of any class of studies as discipline is found in its 



Preface. 11 

tendency to increase the working power of the mind, this 
work in expression is unsurpassed." 

''Yes, you might succeed in getting them to test your 
plan of oral language study, but you have given your book 
the title of Conversation. Personally, I think it appropriate, 
but I fear you count without an idiosyncrasy of the Anglo- 
Saxon mind. Your American or Englishman would glad- 
ly welcome the reputation of fine conversational gifts, but 
he would feel an instinctive recoil from the deliberate study 
of conversation. A lurking apprehension that it might not 
be solid enough would give him pause, and in some instances 
actually deter him from embarking in a study that would ap- 
pear to him too agreeable to be profound. You will have to 
prove to him that it is of transcendent educational value be- 
fore he will touch it with a ten-foot pole in the school-room. 
Don't forget the ascetic leaven in the descendants of the 
Puritans, whatever you doT' 

''I thought I had provided for that in the assumption that 
DeQuincey's fine essay on Conversation was universally 
known. This is in itself a revelation of the mystery of the 
interaction of the* human units in social intercourse. That 
conversation itself has a high disciplinary value may be gath- 
ered from the following extract : 'Lord Bacon has been led 
to remark the capacities of conversation as an organ for 



12 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

sharpening one particular mode of intellectual power. Cir- 
cumstances, on the other hand, led me into remarking the 
special capacities of conversation as an organ for absolutely 
creating another mode of power. Let a man have read, 
thought, studied, as much as he may, rarely will he reach 
his possible advantages as a ready man, unless he has ex- 
ercised his powers much in conversation' — that was Lord Ba- 
con's idea. ^ ^ ^ -^ On the contrary, my own growing 
reveries on the latent powers of conversation pointed to an 
absolute birth of new insight into the truth itself as insepara- 
ble from the finer and more scientific exercise of the talking 
art. It would not be the brilliancy, the ease, or the adroit- 
ness of the expounder, that would benefit, but the absolute 
interests of the thing expounded. A feeling dawned upon 
me of a secret magic lurking in the peculiar life, velocities, 
and contagious ardors of conversation quite separate from 
any which belonged to books; arming a man with new 
forces, and not merely with new dexterity in wielding the 
old ones. I felt, and in this I could not be mistaken, as too 
certainly it was a fact of my own experience, that in the 
electric kindling of life between two minds, .... in 
its momentary coruscation of shifting phases, there some- 
times arise glimpses and shy revelations of afifinity, sug- 
gestion, relation, analogy, that could not have been ap- 
proached through any avenues of methodical study. 



Preface. 13 

''Now, if there lurks a new and specific mental power in 
conversation, it is the function and office of pedagogy to 
ferret it out and avail itself of it to the utmost extent. The 
educational world is not so rich in resources that it can af- 
ford to allow these announcements of new and unexploited 
mines to pass unnoticed. 'This business of conversation is a 
very serious matter,' says the autocrat of the breakfast table. 
'Besides,' he continues, 'there is another thing about this 
talking which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us ; 
the v/aves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the 
pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image a little. I 
rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay.' 
Here, also, is clearly indicated the effect of colloquy on the 
manipulation of thought. Emerson says : 'Conversation is 
the main function of life.' In more than one passage he 
waxes eloquent on its lofty ministry in the elevation and re- 
finement of existence, placing it at the very summit of the 
prizes of life. Surely these men sufifered, 3t the moment 
of such expressions as those quoted above, no lapse of the 
wisdom for which they are so universally esteemed. A proc- 
ess in which these men have discerned such possibilities is 
certainly entitled to the honor at least of thorough test at 
the hands of teachers of our youth, in order that in the race 
of life they may not be driven to the bitter complaint of 



14 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Si*eech. 

Count Cavour, who lamented that he had not been taught 
speaking and composing in youth while his organs were flex- 
ible. The school that would inaugurate the system of teach- 
ing the arts and sciences by Conversation would crown the 
world with a new and lofty benefaction that would repeat 
with increased effectiveness the triumphs of the past. The 
most successful schools of the world were the oral. The 
schools of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Jesus, illustrated 
the advantages of the colloquial method, and showed the 
world what can be accomplished by the living word drop- 
ping like a coal of fire into the soul, embedding itself forever 
there. It was in the oral schools which the women of the 
French salons held in their gilded drawing-rooms that the 
explosive idea of human rights w^as rolled and polished till 
it burst like a bomb-shell and shook the world with its thun- 
ders. It was in the oral schools of Bronson Alcott and Mar- 
garet Fuller that the notorious culture of Boston took its 
rise, and it will be in the oral schools of the Colloquial Ren- 
aissance, which we are about to see, that our higher culture 
will be recast in molds whose chief shaping agencies shall 
have been social sympathy and social inspiration.'' 

''Bravo, my dear ; you are well buttressed by the author- 
ity of literary eminences, but is it not too soon to press this 



Preface. 15 

intellectual socialism upon a race that has not yet got be- 
yond the stage of pride in its riotous individualism?" 

"It is never too soon to deliver one's life-message, what- 
ever betide. Think of the long preliminary work. Think 
of the years that must be spent merely in diffusing ideas 
and erecting ideals. It is two thousand years since the Ser- 
mon on the Mount was delivered, yet how many even now, 
when smitten on one cheek, turn the other also?" 

''God speed you, but I fear you will have to wait a weary 
long time for the fruition of your hopes." 

"I will wait." 

The Author. 



PART I. 



THE ART OF CONVERSATION. 



\l 



THE ART OF CONVERSATION. 



As the main sources of the incapacity for conversation 
are insufficient familiarity with the use of words and inade- 
quate mental training, a course in oral language must be 
pursued as a preliminary to exercise in conversation. But, 
as classes are usually eager to embark immediately in con- 
versation, it has been customary with the present writer to 
give exercises in colloquy proper from the beginning of the 
course. At first this was viewed in the light of a conces- 
sion to the rather unwise clamor of the pupils, but subse- 
quent experience has fully established the wisdom of the 
measure. Talking is like swimming; you must begin by 
floundering in the element you are to master. The new 
methods of learning foreign languages have their origin in 
a similar persuasion. Therefore, exercise in oral language 
work is carried on abreast with actual conversation. 



20 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

As an exercise for training the mind in readiness and ac- 
curacy of thought definition is pursued on an extensive 
scale, and is continued throughout the course. 



Chapter I. 
DEFINITION. 

Locke knew what he was about when he dehvered the 
injunction : *'Be careful to define your terms." 

This practice has two admirable results. In the first 
place, by clearly determining the sense in which words are 
used, the speaker or writer forestalls much profitless dis- 
cussion arising from confusion in the acceptation of terms. 
In the second place, being mentally one of the most strength- 
ening of processes, it gives the mind great vigor and agility 
both in thought and expression. If one is interested in as- 
certaining the efficiency of his mental faculties let him ac- 
quire the habit of calling upon himself to define the abstract 
terms he mostly glibly uses in his daily speech as, for ex- 
ample, culture, temperament, spirituality. He will then be 
astonished to find that his mind, that engine of which he is 



22 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

SO proud, is not an airy-winged creature flitting about whith- 
er it lists, but a poor crippled horse in a treadmill moving 
slowly and painfully in grooves which confine its activity. 
The human mind is unfortunately imprisoned within the 
grooves of the habitual in thought and infinitely more so in 
expression. The moment it tries to step out of the circle of 
the accustomed in language it stumbles and flounders in 
hopeless impotency. Even people of intelligence fail to at- 
tach to this phenomenon the importance it deserves. Its 
universality blinds men to its ominous significance and to 
the shame which it reflects on our methods of mental train- 
ing. The individual who is incapable of defining the terms 
he uses is deficient in mental training; for definition is a 
supreme test of the power of intellectual initiative. It is an 
intellectual exercise, and if the faculties were in good work- 
ing condition this exercise would be accomplished with ease 
and rapidity. The fact that as a rule it cannot be accom- 
plished at all, even by the average university student, should 
long ago have opened the eyes of pedagogic leaders to the 
defects of present mental training and have driven them to 
seek methods by which the mind of the young might re- 
ceive the power of swift and free activity instead of re- 
maining chained to the grooves of habit. Definition, then, 
is our means of conferring upon our subjects the power of 



The Art of Conversation. 23 

free locomotion and emancipating them from the leading 
strings of custom. 

The class is called upon to give impromptu definitions 
of words. The strength which the mind acquires by this 
process will soon be apparent to the intelligent student. Let 
the teacher begin by calling the attention of the class to the 
elastic nature of the elements of language, words meaning 
now one thing and now another. As an illustration of this 
quahty of language the word life may be taken. The teacher 
will embody the term in a sentence and call upon each mem- 
ber of the class to define it as used in the sentence given. 

Ex. — Life is hard for the transgressor. 

The sum of the ideas contained in the definitions given 
by the class, when winnowed of errors, would probably be 
that 

Life is the space of time which elapses betzveen the birth and 
deaih of an individual with especial reference to the per- 
sonal vicissitudes which form its historic content. 

The foregoing is suggested by the writer, not as a pre- 
scription, but as an example which is humbly submitted for 
the sake of exposition. The teacher, in collaboration with 
the pupils, often succeeds in framing much better definitions 



24 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

than can be found even in standard dictionaries. This af- 
fords great delight to the class and becomes the source of 
profound intellectual interest and improvement. 

Then the teacher may submit another use of the same 
word : 
Farra/s Life of Christ, 

Definitions will also be given of this use of the word. 
The word as used here will no doubt be found to mean the 
history or account of the personality, and of the events at- 
tending the career of the subject in question, 

A third example : 

That zvas painted frotn life. 

Life here would mean a living object. 

This w^ould again be the result of submitting the defini- 
tion of this use of the word to the class as a problem in lan- 
guage. These are really all language problems, and have 
a more decided effect in sharpening the intellect than prob- 
lems in mathematics, because in mathematics the pupil sim- 
ply follows a rule already framed for him ; in the language 
problem he is thrown on his own intellectual initiative. 

He leads an evil life, might be used as a fourth example 
and defined the moral circumstances of a subject, as reveal- 
ing moral character. 



The Art of Conversation. 25 

Indeed, this word is susceptible of from twelve to fifteen 
definitions. A feat of ingenuity might be required of the 
class, namely, to construct a sentence or a paragraph con- 
taining the word in all its various acceptations, and then to 
define the word rapidly according to its meaning in each one 
of the various uses. This would sharpen the discriminating 
power. 

One great defect of the untrained modern mind is lack 
of perceptive power united to lack of the power of describ- 
ing accurately the objects perceived. To remedy this, daily 
call should be made upon the class for description of objects 
brought under their vision. For example, hold up the hand 
and ask the pupils first to define hand in general and then 
to give a description of the particular hand held out to their 
view. This will be seen to demand the fullest exercise of 
the perceptive powers on the one hand and on the other of 
recording in expression or language the content of the con- 
sciousness. Let the teacher and pupils criticise the account 
given of the object until no defect occurs in the description 
or the definition. 

The teacher should be careful to exact a correct formula 
for the definitions. Thus, insist on the introduction of the 
definition by a definite prediction classifying the object to be 
defined. 



26 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

Kxample : 

1. A chair is an object which, etc. 

2. Dyeing is a process which, etc. 

3. Misery is a state, etc. 

4. To strike is an action, etc. 

5. Memory is a faculty, etc. 

Call especial attention to the faculties involved in these 
exercises. Train the pupils to see that defining in this way 
consists in straining the perceptive powers to analyze the 
content of consciousness and the expressive power to give a 
transcript of this content in language — a most valuable and 
strengthening discipline., To illustrate this take the words 
to dye and to shoot. The class will begin by defining to 
shoot as an action; they will probably designate to dye as an 
action ilso. At the teacher's appeal for reconsideration as 
to the latter, some member of the class will probably sug- 
gest process instead of action. This substitute will receive 
the teacher's approval, who will call upon the class to give 
the difference between a process and an action. The class 
will at first probably venture the assertion that a process is a 
kind of action. When pressed to explain what kind of an 
action it is, probably no one will be able to give answer. The 
teachers should then ask the class if the word process could 
not be applied to anything that was done under certain cir- 



The Art of Conversation. 27 

cumstances. After some reflection the class would undoubt- 
edly recognize the less general nature of the term. After 
putting in parallel words representing processes, and words 
representing single actions, there will always be at least one 
pupil in the class who will explain that a process consists of a 
series of actions. Then let the pupils frame a full definition. 
Should they say merely that a process is a series of actions, 
then ask them if to strike a number of times, performing the 
action each time in one and the same manner, would con- 
stitute a process? The answer would undoubtedly be "no, 
for this would immediately enable them to see that an im- 
portant element had been omitted. Then ask them to name 
some particular process, after which tell them to compare 
the process with the mere succession of similar actions. At 
this stage of the exercise most of the class will discover that 
a process is not a mere succession of similar actions, but a 
number of actions differing from each other but all con- 
verging towards the same foreseen and desired end. 

This process may be reversed and the definition of a word 

be given without pronouncing the word itself. To discover 

this will be the work of the class. This is at once an ex- 

.tremely interesting and profitable exercise and the requisite 

complement of the preceding one. This will inculcate the 



28 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

habit of synthesis, while the other serves to train the mind 
in analysis. 

For example say to the class : ''Give the word of which 
the following sentence is the definition :" 
The whole system of means by zvhich a state is maintained. 

After a little reflection it will appear plain to them that 
government is indicated, and they will say so. Should they 
hesitate too long the teacher might frame another definition 
of the same word. It is a strange but undeniable fact that 
oftentimes of two equally clear, adequate, and simple defini- 
tions one will appear as an impenetrable cloud to the mind 
of an individual, while the other, owing to some unfathomed 
trick of association, will throw a flood of light upon the fac- 
ulties. Every teacher in language will make this experi- 
ence. To give another example : 
The appointed action of any organ, or 
The peculiar action which any organ 
performs. 

The class will soon see that function is meant. 

A third example will no doubt suffice to show how this 
exercise should be conducted. 
Strict attention to conventional rules, or 
Undeviating compliance zmth the rules of 
social process. 

This will soon appear to be formality. 



Chapter II. 
SYNONYMS. 

If the exercise of definition gives the mind vigor and 
agiHty, the discrimination of synonyms imparts to it the in- 
estimable quaHties of subtlety and delicacy. 

Synonyms being words which coincide with each other in 
the essential elements of meaning and differ in the minor 
ones, the process of differentiating them brings into activity 
the acutest powers of thought. 

Let the synonyms taste and talent be taken for illustra- 
tion. 

What is the definition of taste? The class will not very 
readily define this. It is likely that after careful reflection 
some one will suggest that it is a faculty of the mind which 
consists in the power of judging or discriminating. Select 
then some homely process, as the setting up of a kitchen 



30 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

stove, and ask the class whether this process would give 
scope to the power of judgment (for instance, as to whether 
the pipe were straight) . The answer would be yes. Ask now 
whether the faculty of taste would be involved. The answer 
would certainly be no. Then put to the class questions con- 
cerning subjects of the fine arts. The pupils will forthwith 
agree that such subjects give scope to the exercise of the 
faculty of taste. This will lead them to see that by calling 
taste simply a faculty of judgment they had given the word 
undue extension, and that when properly restricted it would 
mean the power of judgment in aesthetic matters. 

Now ask for the definition of talent. Some will pro- 
nounce it exactly vicarious with taste; others will feel a dis- 
tinction which they cannot express. Give them a sentence 
containing talent, as for instance: He has talent for music. 
Ask the class what talent means here. The substance of the 
answers will assuredly be that it refers to a measure of abil- 
ity in some department of activity. Accept this and then col- 
late the two words as synonyms. If the pupils can not at 
once discriminate between them, remind them of their defin- 
itions in virtue of which ability, which implies the power of \ 
doing or executing, is assigned to one term, and the power \ 
of judging merely is assigned to the other. When the class \ 
has agreed unanimously, as it very likely will, that talent is / 



The Art of Conversation. 31 

the power of executing, and taste the power of judging, in 
matters of aesthetic excellence, submit the sentence : She has 
taste in dressing, as appHed to a woman who is the author 
of her own toilets, and ask the class whether taste here im- 
plies mere discrimination, or whether it refers to executive 
or creative power in the department in question. They will 
be a little perplexed to find that the word they thought they 
had accurately defined now presents itself under a new as- 
pect. They must then be told that taste which, rigorously 
constructed, implies merely the power of discerning is, in 
popular parlance, allowed to encroach upon the confines of 
talent. In the same way we say that one who decorates a 
table well has a taste for such decorative work, when talent 
is plainly indicated by reference to the power of doi7ig. 
These instances will be shown to be illustrations of the prin- 
ciple of elasticity that is one of the most interesting char- 
acteristics of organic language, and which would be found 
to be utterly lacking in Volapuk or any mechanically con- 
trived mode of speech. Genius and talent could then be com- 
pared, showing genius to be a property of the mind diflfer- 
ing from talent, not only in degree but also in kind. An in- 
teresting discussion and consequently a spirited conversation 
is likely to ensue in the consideration of this subject. The 
teacher must not check the conversation as would be done 



32 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

in any other class. Indeed, it must always be a matter of 
gratulation that the talk is well under way. This is the 
teacher's opportunity for observing the merits and defects 
of each pupil as they reveal themselves in unpremeditated 
discourse. The colloquial characteristics thus coming to 
light must be noted for future reference and impersonal sug- 
gestions designed for correction. Above all let the teacher 
note the degree in which each pupil uses his imagination as 
manifested either in wit, humor, comparison, allusion, fig- 
ures of rhetoric, or a peculiar quality of quaintness w^hich 
sometimes shows itself in the speech of some persons. This 
will enable the teacher to take an inventory of the material 
with which he has to work. Errors of all orders will be 
noted and corrected later on and impersonally, as the in- 
terruption of a pupil to correct him invariably throws a 
damper on his spirits, and for a space eclipses his faculties. 
Therefore, let the temptation to bring the discussion to a 
close be strenuously resisted, especially at first, for it is of 
the utmost importance that the personnel of the class early 
betray what lurks in them. Whether errors of pronuncia- 
tion and syntax should be corrected in the conversation class 
is a matter which must be left entirely to the ordinance of 
circumstance. In a school where the pupils are young and 



The Art of Conversation. 33 

still generally agree to consider their exercises in all de- 
partments as subject to correction, these little points should 
be redressed. In private classes the question should be sub- 
mitted to the class, and even then much tact is requisite to 
correct faults without ruffling the susceptibilities of sensi- 
tive souls. It is one thing to assent to a policy of correction, 
and quite another to stand bravely under the assault of one's 
personal vanity or the defeat of one's intellectual preten- 
sions. 



Chapter III. 

ANTONYMS. 

As a complement to the exercise in synonyms we have 
that of antonyms. The foregoing exercise may be judicious- 
ly supplemented by the teacher's calling out a word and re- 
quiring of the class to give all the synonyms of it that oc- 
cur to them. There must be no pause until the possibilities 
are exhausted. For instance, the teacher might pronounce 
the word scold. Following this lead the class would call out 
in turn, chide^ rebuke, reprove, reprehend, reprimand, etc. 
Now, closely upon this exercise that of antonyms should 
follow. The definition of antonym should first be given, 
namely, the word which is directly the opposite of another in 
meaning. The teacher might then utter the word virtuous 
— the class would say wicked or vicious. Antonyms of in- 
duce (i. e., deter) ^ of deprive (i. e., endow), to delight (i. e.. 



The Art of Conversation. 35 

horrify), might be called for. Then name the correspond- 
ing nouns and call for their antonyms, as inducement, deter- 
rent; deprivation, endoument, etc. It is requisite even for 
advanced classes to begin with the simplest concrete terms 
and gradually ascend to the less simple and more abstract 
ones — from the more to the less familiar ones. 



Chapter IV. 
ALTERATION OF PARTS OF SPEECH. 

That familiarity with language which implies the ready 
passing from one part of speech to another made on the same 
root or united to it by meaning is one rarely met with even 
among our intelligent classes. This enables one to condense 
one's sentences by reducing predication; and also to avoid 
tautology. 

Ex. — / promised to do all I could for them; indeed, all 
that winter I did do all I could for them, but nozv^, etc. 

Say, rather,/ promised to do all I could for them. Indeed 
that winter I did help them to the extent of my ability, but 
now, etc. 

If you have to speak about the poor no longer caring 
about their homes and families as much as formerly and your 
arguments require a repetition of this thought, to vary the 



The Art of Conversation. 37 

expression, refer to the decay of the domestic affections 
among the lower classes, 

A lady on the floor of a dub once said : ''Mrs. X. says 
she is sorry for what she said about the measure I proposed, 
but I don't believe she is sorry, for she, etc. Now if she 
wants m^ to believe that she is sorry, she ought to, etc. 

Now she repeated the phrase she is sorry until the nerves 
of the ear were contracted by a spasm under the impact of 
the unvarying sound. It ought not to have been difficult 
for her if she had any command whatever of her mother 
tongue now to refer to the lady's regret and now to question 
the genuineness of the lady's penitence, etc. 

These are not merely small matters of taste, they easily 
become questions of humanity. You have no more right to 
make a person suffer by the monotony of your expressions 
than you have to inflict any other mode of pain upon him. 
If you are moved by no personal ambition for excellence, you 
are still bound to consider the sensibilities of others. 

The degree of sensibility to such things is confessedly a 
measure of refinement. 



Chapter V. 

VOCABULARY. 

As the chief obstacle to a ready flow of language lies in 
an insufficient command of terms, one of the most urgent 
needs is that of vocabulary extension. A word of caution is 
here seas9nable. There is a trait in the Anglo-Saxon tem- 
perament which instinctively recoils from deliberate study 
of words. A false sense that there lies in such pursuit an 
element of vanity and affectation seems to haunt like a phan- 
tom the Puritan mind. It is a relic of the old, unlovely as- 
ceticism that led our colonial forefathers to frown down on 
art, mirth, beauty in costume and appointments, on compli- 
ments, gallantry, and the courtesies of life. It does not ap- 
pear inconsistent to the American to have an unbounded rev- 
erence for the laws of grammar which control the forms of 
words and to neglect utterly to acquire a command of those 



The Art of Conversation. 3^ 

words for practical use. People will ask with an ill-dis- 
guised sneer whether you are going to study the dictionary. 
Answer promptly that you intend to do so and, that too, 
strenuously. Rufus Choate, Emerson, Holmes, Balzac and 
nearly all truly great men of letters have borne strong and 
cheerful testimony to the absorbing interest of mere words. 
The term words is often used to denote that which, com- 
pared with action, is false or unmeaning. Words are never 
unmeaning. They are symbols of thought, and he who deals 
advisedly with words deals with thoughts. He, who ac- 
quires a new word, as a rule, acquires a new thought. 
Therefore, much stress must be laid on the importance of 
increasing the number of terms at the command of the sub- 
ject. Those Puritanic minds who take a superficial view of 
the matter deprecate the deliberate study of words for fear 
that, as the flow of words increases, the stock of thoughts 
will decrease. Now, a little investigation will convince any 
one that our thoughts at all times far outnumber our words 
— that we always have on hand more mental material than 
power to express it. A proof of this is the inability of any 
one, however skillful in the use of language, to make an ab- 
solutely true word-picture of anybody. Yet, every feature that 
eludes the grasp of expression is a distnict image or idea, 
and a subject for verbal transcript, if only language could 



40 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

attain to it. We harbor an unlimited list of ideas which 
have long since become commonplaces of inward thought, 
but which have never received the sacrament of expression. 
The task of the teacher is here a delicate one. He must in- 
vent some means for testing the pupiFs power of expression, 
or more strictly speaking, of concise expression; for many 
thcflights are conveyed by unnecessarily circuitous methods. 
A pupil who could not tell her teacher whetlier she had 
ready use of language or not, said in a narrative undertaken 
for the purposes of test, that the hero had by night not yet 
gotten to where he wanted to go, thus proving that she was 
unfamiliar with the simple term destination. Thus, instead 
of leading to verbosity, command of language gives the 
power of being concise by enabling one to put a single word 
in the place of a whole sentence. Circumlocution of the kind 
noted above is the characteristic fault of little children, and 
of all those who are inexpert in verbal expression. The sa- 
gacious teacher will make her pupils embark in some narra- 
tion and keep a sharp lookout for such awkward circumlo- 
cutions, make a note of them, and subsequently repeat them 
to the pupils and seek to lead them by their own efforts to 
discover more concise substitutes for their too round about 
phrases. This process will come under the head of reduction 
of predication — a tendency which characterizes the evolu- 



The Art of Conversation. 41 

tion of language. This consists in reducing the number of 
sentences and substituting nouns, adjectives, or particles for 
them. Children are apt to speak something after this fash- 
ion : ''Papa gave me a book ; it's a big book, t keep my pic- 
tures in it.'' It takes considerable practice in language to 
teach them to condense these three independent predica- 
tins into one, so that they say : 'Tapa gave me a big book in 
which I keep my pictures." As simple as this sentence is it 
indicates progress in the use of language, because it involves 
economy of means, the principle of evolution, and progress 
in all the arts. Now, people who are untrained in the use of 
language are liable to commit the same errors of construc- 
tion. The language of ordinary oral narration teems with 
these superfluously multiplied predications. To test the 
truth of this assertion one has but to listen to the first draw- 
ing-room account of a dream, a trip, or an accident that is 
unfolded before him. He will be astonished at the repeti- 
tions of conjunctions and verbs, at the undue multiplication 
of small sentences, and the manifold awkwardness of ex- 
pression revealed. 

Let us illustrate by a transcript from a class exercise. A 
pupil is recounting a dream in order to afford a test of his 
narrative powers : 



42 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

''I dreamed last night I heard the fire bells ring, and I 
thought I got up and dressed and I thought I went out and 
saw a big blaze in the distance toward the south. I thought 
it was in the direction of the university. As my mother 
and sister live out in that quarter I felt an impulse to rush 
out to the scene of the accident w^ith all haste. And I 
thought I impelled myself forward with all my might, but 
I thought I did not seem to myself to make any headway. 
I thought I looked about me and beheld a great throng on 
the street, and I thought I was surprised to see everybody 
walking as leisurely as if they were out for a moonlight 
promenade. I thought they did not betray the least excitement 
and I thought they were all dressed in deep mourning and 
that they all had a solemn air like people going to a funeral. 
I thought this began to have a wierd effect upon me. And 
I thought what made it worse was that I was tortured with 
the idea of my not being able to get on any faster, although 
I exerted myself to my utmost. I thought I felt a sort of 
tearing in the inside of me, produced by my straining to get 
forward, but I thought I felt my feet dragging themselves 
painfully, one after the other, as if they were made of lead. 
This produced in me a sense of torture impossible to de- 
scribe. Then I thought I saw the engine and the rest of the 
fire apparatus come along, but I thought they moved along 



The Art of Conversation. 43 

heavily and slowly, as if they too formed part of a funeral 
train." 

We need not continue. For our purpose let it suffice to 
point out that it is an American idiosyncrasy to dot the re- 
cital of a dream with the repeated phrase '1 thought.*' With 
other peoples it suffices to open the relation with the an- 
nouncement that it is a dream. The subjectivity of the mat- 
ter and the contingency of the actions and sentiments are 
thereafter steadily kept in mind without further formal re 
minder. 

it will be observed that the conjection ''and'' is also 
redundantly used. Otherwise the narrative presents a pretty 
fair example of the way even intelligent people use language 
for the practical purposes of life. It will suffice at first to 
eliminate the grossest and most frequently recurring errors 
of diction, and reserve the inculcation of niceties for a more 
advanced stage of discipline. 

One very effective means of increasing the vocabulary 
is to read a passage to a pupil, asking him to call for a pause 
as soon as you pronounce a word which he has not mastered 
colloquially. To explain the last phrase let us begin by call- 
ing the reader's attention to the fact that the average person 
has three vocabularies — one available in reading, another in 
writing, and a third in speaking. The first consists of all the 



44 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

words on the written page which the subject recognizes and 
understands; the second of such words as he can command 
when writing, which is much smaller than the preceding, 
and the last of such words as he has sufficiently mastered 
to use them in his conversation, which vocabulary is by far 
the narrowest of all. The problem of the sagacious student 
of language will be to merge the three vocabularies into one. 
To this end he will strive to convert all the words of his 
reading vocabulary into elements of the talking vocabulary. 
This must be done systematically, namely, by converting 
to colloquial use all the familiar words one finds on the 
written page. It is objected to this by a certain class of 
cirtics that there will be danger of undue attention being 
given to words, with the result that the importance of 
thought will be overlooked. This certainly cannot be the 
case where it is sought to use in talking only such words as 
one already knows when bound on the written page. For 
to know a word is simply to possess the thought of which 
the word is but the symbol. Neither can this be the case, 
even where the pupil is led to add to his vocabulary a word 
whose meaning was previously unknown to him for, before 
he can make any use of a word in his talk, he must thor- 
oughly grasp the idea for which it stands. Let us hasten 
to prove this. To take first a case where the meaning of 



The Art of Conversation. 45 

the word is well known when found written, but has not be- 
come an organ of the subject's oral language. 

The following case is a transcript of the present writer's 
own experience in a conversation class. The teacher is the 
first speaker: 

T. — Mrs. BealSj interrupt me when I come to a zvord 
whose meaning yon know, but of which you have not yet 
made use in talking: 

"He hesitated to propose marriage so long as he felt 
,his subsistence so precarious in — " 

Mrs. Beales. — 'T know the word precarious, but it has 
never occurred to me to use it in my daily conversation, and 
yet it is plainly a very useful word. I think that whenever 
hitherto I have had occasion to express that quality I have 
used the word uncertain/' 

T. — '^Uncertain is, indeed, given as a synonym of pre- 
carious, and yet its etymology shows it to be the symbol of 
quite another property. Originally it means simply unin- 
formed; that is, a thing is uncertain when you are not sure 
that it exists at all. A thing is precarious which does, in- 
deed, exist or subsist, but of which it is uncertain how long 
it will continue to be. The happiness of a friend whom I 
have not seen for a long time is uncertain (i. e.^ I am un- 
informed of it), but my own happiness is precarious because 



46 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

it is contingent on the health of my son who is very liable 
to illness/' The use of uncertain for precariGiis is, indeed, 
authorized but it adds to one's power of discrimination to 
use the more specialized term. 

Mrs. Beals was then summoned to construct sentences 
in which the word might be correctly used, as — The tenure 
of an invalid's life is very precarious, the triumph of the 
gambler is precarious, etc. 

This exercise was continued until the subject declared 
that she had mastered the word for daily use. 

During the same lesson, one lady stopped the reader at 
the word allege, and another at the w^ord invalidate. Sen- 
tences were given to illustrate both terms, and finally one 
sentence was constructed which contained both words within 
a narrow compass, as follows : The facts you allege do not 
invalidate my doctrine. 

The fact that it transpires in these exercises that many 
who fancy they know the meaning of a word, really compre- 
hend it but feebly, shows the great value of this sort of dis- 
cipline. A valuable exercise consists in presenting to the 
class an idea clothed in its most elementary form and request 
the pupils each in turn to render the idea in other words, 
gradually reducing the prediction until the idea has attained 
its most adequate, i. e., at once its most correct and most 
concise form. 



Chapter VI. 

ANALYSIS OF WIT AND HUMOR AS 
LANGUAGE DISCIPLINE. 

The analysis of traits of wit and humor constitutes an 
invakiable discipline in the pursuit of language as a vehicle 
of expression and a^ an instrument of thinking. The 
simplest pleasantry will often present the greatest difficulties 
to him who seeks to formulate its analysis in adequate terms. 

A few examples will suffice to illustrate this proposition. 
For the first we will take an ordinary newspaper clipping : 

BIRDS OF A FEATHER. 

Beg pardon, sir; but who are you? 

I am the husband of Mrs. Lease of Kansas, and yon? 

I am the husband of the Infanta Eidalia of Spain. 

Shake! 

The most uncultivated reader instantly grasps the humor 



48 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. • 

of the passage and smiles at its perusal. He understands 
it, therefore, thoroughly ; but ask him to explain the facetia, 
to state in clear, definite terms the principle on which the 
pleasantry reposes, and in nearly every case you will find 
him at a loss for adequate expression. Examine the passage 
well yourself, and you will readily see that it constitutes 
quite a problem in language, and is more difficult of solution 
than a problem of arithmetic or algebra could be to one who 
had given ordinary study to these sciences. 

Take this other example : 

Wine Merchant: Could yon paint me a picture that 
zvould fill out this space on the wall of my store and symbol- 
ically illustrate my business for the benefit of the public? 

Painter: Why, certainly! Say Christ at the marriage 
feast at Cana, changing water into zvine. 

An explanation of the motives which underline these two 
bits of pleasantry will prove an excellent exercise in lan- 
guage. It will first of all require strenuous exercise in think- 
ing to get the idea clearly engraved on the mind, then the 
mind will be as strenuously occupied in seeking language 
which shall perfectly express the idea. This will immediately 
show to what an extent the neglect of oral language has 
robbed us of all command of spontaneous^ speech^ and how 
much it has paralyzed the activity of thought itself. We do 



The Art of Conversation. 49 

so much automatic thinking that we have greatly impaired 
the vigor and clearness of our thought. Excepting always 
the commonest daily mental processes which we go through 
unconsciously, everything in our mind is vague. We never 
stop to take account of our intellectual process, but our cere- 
bration take place by an automatic routine, like the processes 
in the brain of the brute creation. The dignity of our 
nature demands that we should vigorously resume the glori- 
ous power of initiative of which our rude forefathers gave 
such edifying proof when they invented language at all. We 
should create for ourselves the opportunity for new experi- 
ences in verbal expression. Such opportunity is presented 
by the present exercises. The reader who studies these two 
examples of facetiae with a view first to analyzing them, and 
then to giving expression to the analysis, will recognize, as 
he never did before, how lame are his processes of thought 
and speech. But he will at least be thrown on his own 
initiative, and freedom in the use of language will begin for 
him. The exercises will richly repay the pains they cost by 
giving him an insight into real methods by which habits 
of clear and logical thought are fostered, and the power of 
accurate expression is formed. Let us tackle the problem 
together. 

The motive of the first pleasantry, which is rather of 



50 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

humor than of wit, illustrates the sense of humiHation which 
is traditionally ascribed to the unknown husbands of well- 
known women. Their union in a handshake suggests their 
recognition of the proverb that misery loves company. The 
aesthetic sense is moreover stirred by the subtleness with 
which all that we have said in the analysis is implied in a 
single syllable — i. e., Shake! The artistic sense is always 
gratified by the skillful adaptation of means to ends, and in 
artistic process, economy, and adequacy, are the two factors. 
The mind is delighted at seeing multum in parvo. 

The motive of the second witticism lies in the surprise 
caused by the unexpected intrusion of the sarcasm lurking 
in the subject chosen by the painter. When a tradesman 
asks to have his business illustrated it is a self-evident im- 
plication that he desires only such a presentation as will sug- 
gest to the mind of the observer the most advantageous 
phases of his industry. Thus we may picture the dismay 
of the wine merchant who finds, in the subject proposed, a 
reflection of the public distrust of the purity of his wares. 
This furnishes the element of surprise ; and the fact that we 
are amused by detecting foibles in our fellow-men make 
this reference to dishonest practice agreeable. Thus these 
two requirements of wit laid down by Addison, surprise and 
delight, are here embodied, and make of the pleasantry an 
ideal specimen. 



The Art of Conversation. 51 

A SPECIMEN OF HUMOR. 

It will be said by sentimentalists that it is a fatal process 
to analyze traits of wit or humor — that it is robbing a rose of 
its perfume, etc., etc. 

To this objection we answer simply that there are two 
widely different ways of dealing with a flower. The one 
way is to deal with it as a whole and to open all the avenues 
of the soul to its features of beauty, its color, form and fra- 
grance ; and that nameless charm which consists in the mani- 
fold associations which the bare name of the flower calls up 
in the soul — The mind of man as a whole, greets the flower 
as a whole. That is the aesthetic attitude and the flower re- 
mains a synthesis — that organic union of parts, which it was 
intended to represent in creation. 

The other way of looking at it is to inquire into the way 
it has been composed, the number and variety of its parts, 
their functions and relations to each other. The mind 
through one of its parts — (i. e., the understanding), looks 
at the flower in one of its aspects (i. e., its structure). 

This is the process of the botanist and is quite as legiti- 
mate as the contemplative attitude of the layman who con- 
fines himself to the enjoyment of the flower as an emotional 
stimulant. The susceptibility of man to this two-fold rela- 



52 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

tion to such objects as are capable of exciting his sense of the 
beautiful, obtains no less in the domain of art than in that of 
nature. 

To the mere lover of painting, a canvas is an object of 
rapturous contemplation and nothing further. He sees the 
picture as a whole and saturates himself with the aesthetic 
emotion it calls forth within him. He is not concerned with 
its parts in isolation. He addresses his soul to the artistic 
unity which the picture represents. 

A professional connoisseur, however^ who seeks to make 
a critical study of its ''points," forthwith dissolves this unity, 
making abstraction of each part in turn to ascertain its value. 
His attitude is not a perfect parallel to that of the botanist 
referred to above, for the reason that his criticism, though 
certainly technical, never loses sight of aesthetic motives and 
in the last analysis is referable to aesthetic effect ; while the 
botanist's quest is wholly a scientific and practical, that is, 
an unaesthetic one. The processes are allied in this respect — 
that in each case of analysis there occurs the dissolution of 
an object whose highest value inheres in its unity. 

Now a witticism or a bon mot is a work of verbal art, 
and may, like the flower and the picture, be viewed from the 
standpoint of beauty and be merely enjoyed; or it may be 



The Art of Conversation. 53 

regarded from the standpoint of structure and be resolved 
into its elements for scientific purposes. 

Neither will the analyst of the pleasantry be debarred 
from enjoying at will the peculiar and aesthetically valuable 
features of the witticism any more than the botanist's habit 
of taking the flower apart, impairs his power of responding 
to its aesthetic appeal when he beholds it in its unity and the 
fullness of its properties. These functions are not mutually 
incompatible, but, as they represent different processes, they 
cannot exercise the same mind at the same time. They can, 
however, succeed each other in rapid alternation. 

Now, with the caution that the dissection of a witticism 
and its enjoyment be strictly kept apart, we invite the stu- 
dent to attend to the analysis of a piece of familiar humor. 
We have learned that it constitutes a good exercise in lan- 
guage, because it forces to expression intuitions that before 
were felt and inwardly conceived without ever attaining to 
utterance. Besides, if the pupil will conceive his comments 
in a humorous vein he will thereby improve his faculty for 
facetia. 

The following is such an exercise by a pupil who is pur- 
suing oral language by the method we advocate. It is not 
the finest of models, but it indicates a measurable approxi- 
mation to intellectual playfulness : 



54 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

The Tomb of Adam, 
mark twain. 

The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a 
land of strangers, far away from home and friends! True, 
he was a blood relation; though a distant one, still a relation! 
The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The 
fountain of my iilial affection was stirred to the profoundest 
depths, and I gave way to tumultuous emotion, I leaned 
upon a pillar and burst into tears, I deem it no shame to 
have wept over the grave of my poor, dead relative. Let 
him who would sneer at my emotion close this volum^e. 
Noble old man! He did not live to see his child: and I — / 
alas! did not live to see him.. Weighed down by sorrozv 
and disappointment, he died before I was born — six thous- 
sand brief summers before I was born. But let us try to 
bear it with fortitude. Let us trust he is better off where 
he is. Let us take comfort in the thought that his loss is 
our eternal gain. 

The principle- motive here is the factitious grief of the 
author over a subject that has for so many centuries been 
removed from the painful concern of humanity. We are 
touched by a calamity in proportion as it is near and recent. 
However stupendous may be a disaster it affects us but 



The Art of Conversation. 55 

feebly as soon as time or space interpose to render it remote. 
Adam having died over sixty centuries ago, we deem it un- 
necessary to pay any tribute of tears to his memory. Not so 
the genius. To his vivid imagination the long past is like 
unto the present. With a strong blow from his potent hand 
he annihilates the giant distance which stands between him 
and a tender interest in his relative — the very first he ever 
had in the world; for it is plain that before the birth of 
Adam, our author had no relative whatever, but stood 
*'alone, alone on the wide, wide sea'' of human uncreated- 
ness. That was one melancholy fact which the mourner 
overlooked. "He deems it no shame to have wept over the 
grave of his dead relative." Neither do we. Heaven for- 
bid ! Only, in our miserable prosaic way of doing, we had 
considered that Adam had been wept over before, and so 
thoroughly wept over by his loving wife and children that 
we were exempt from any such melancholy testimony of our 
interest in him — in short, be it said without irreverence, we 
had, in our besottedness, fancied that it was not our funeral. 
But thanks to an example of robust filiality which is the 
privilege of genius alone, there is another musty theory ex- 
ploded ! ''Let him who would sneer at my emotion close 
this volume.'' Close this volume? By no means! Be- 
cause, if the emotion doesn't suit us, the fun does, and that's 



56 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

what we are after; besides, we have at once scientific and 
archaeological leanings. This mummified emotion — of filial 
grief — that has lain desiccated for ages, and that we have 
all the while been looking upon as a mere relic and curiosity 
lying among the jumbled bric-a-brac of our memory — this 
emotion, copiously treated with contemporaneous tears, has, 
like the dried-up corpse of About's ''Man with the Broken 
Ear" resumed the form and consistency of life — it lives, 
moves, and has its being ; nay, weeps and sobs before us : 
''Noble old man — he did not live to see his child." Here 
is another remarkable trait and proof of our author's geni- 
ality. We had ourselves been inclined to look upon the 
nobility of our first parent as disfigured by some notable 
breaches.* He had weakly yielded to the tempter, and then 
when called upon to testify had, in the most cowardly man- 
ner, laid the blame on the frailer shoulders of Eve. In 
short, some of us had been bold enough to declare that Adam 
had cut but a poor figure in the drama of the Garden of 
Eden. But this was an error of judgment. Among our 
author's manifold merits shone conspicuous that of every 
genuine Missourian — the reverence for the old settler! It 
was in vain that the cynic philosophy of certain modern 
thinkers had drawn attention to the unimportance of the 
Genesis; it was in vain that higher criticism had laid an 



The Art of Conversation. 57 

irreverent hand on a thousand cherished prepossessions, 
Mark Twain could.see no flies on Adam. ''He did not Hve 
to see his child." The pathos of this reflection will be 
greatly enhanced if we but remember how much fun Adam 
missed in not living to read his child's books. We, too, are 
not insensible to the allurements of imagination, but by the 
lamp of fancy we are able to discern old Adam in his pre- 
carious garment of dried leaves, warming his fingers before 
Col. Sellers' modest fire. "He dies six thousand brief sum- 
mers ago." With what tender euphemism the son tries to 
lessen to the ear the lapse of ages, no doubt to seem i^earer 
his parent. But to the prosaic soul, six thousand of those 
seasons, however brief, make up a blooming lot of summers. 
''But let us try to bear it with fortitude." We have heard 
that before somewhere. Perhaps it was at the funeral of a 
more recently departed relative. But^ somehow, its famil- 
iarity does not incline us to contempt. No, we feel its ap- 
propriateness more than ever. When a man has gone all 
the way to Jerusalem, and has traveled sixty long centuries 
to fish up and load on an old grief, it certainly behooves 
him to bear it decently ; indeed, it is questionable in my mind 
whether it would be proper for him to let anybody else help 
bear it. It seems to me he ought to be jealous of the whole 
burden. There is an etiquette which belongs to such solem- 



58 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

nities which all of us would fain see observed. "Let us 
hope he is better off where he is." No doubt he gets a better 
vi-ew of the "New Lamentations.'' "Let us take comfort in 
the thought that his loss is our eternal gain.'' This sounds 
somewhat familiar, too, but haply we are mistaken and the 
fumes of sympathy dim our understanding. Let us all 
weep ! 

Let the pupil observe how, in the foregoing quotation, 
the conceit of grief, whose mere suggestion was laughable, 
is ably maintained through a considerable passage by the 
use of all the cant phrases that are usually unfolded at the 
bier or the tomb ; and how this scheme is varied by the uses 
of rhetorical figures. "He did not live to see his child, and 
I — I did not live to see him,'' is an example of antistrophe 
which has a droll effect, the fact which it expresses being so 
from the very nature of things and thus perfectly obvious. 
In "that his loss is our eternal gain'' is the inversion of a 
popular phrase, a single transposition being sufficient to 
change the whole sentiment to its opposite while the sound 
remains nearly the same. The effect of drollery is further 
greatly enhanced by the fact that the inverted sentiment of 
the saying happens to run counter to the whole drift of sen- 
timent in the passage, and is the first earnest that the author 
gives us that he is conscious of his own grimacing. It is 



The Art of Conversation. 59- 

the genuine grin of the humorist breaking through his fac- 
titious tears. 

In these exercises the pupil whatever his age must con- 
sent to be as modest as a child learning to read or write ; and 
to be patient though he stumble in his attempts to sacrifice 
to the muses of grace and wit and humor. It is already a 
distinct point gained for some people, that they succeed in 
assuming, however awkwardly, the humorous attitude; for 
humor is a great sweetener of life's woes and an almost 
absolute guarantee against fanaticism. He who can readily 
laugh at any view entertained by himself or others is not 
likely to become morbid in his conceptions. 

Fanaticism is the petrifaction of a man in the attitude of 
seriousness towards some opinion which he cherishes. 
Humor, on the other hand, is the index of a certain fluidity 
of temperament which enables a man to divest his mind at 
will of any garment of thought which reflection may have 
woven around it, and to hold it up in front of him for in- 
spection and, if need be, for ridicule. It is the badge of the 
freedom of the mind which rescues it from the danger of be- 
coming subdued to its means — it is, in brief, the evidence of 
a certain sanity and even generosity of view point to which 
we are wont to apply the term philosophy. 

The present writer who has had experience in this mode 



60 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

of discipline has been pleased to observe that in those who 
very properly declared themselves incapable of conceiving 
a subject humorously, have gradually acquired the faculty 
much to their improvement not only from the mental but 
from the moral standpoint as well. As a moral agent the 
value of humor is but imperfectly appreciated. It is a won- 
derful antiseptic, absolutely counteracting that morbid and 
restless tendency so often encountered in our youth as a re- 
sult of too constant study and of that tension of the mind 
whose unvarying application to serious pursuits impairs its 
buoyancy. Add to this effect a more generous moral atti- 
tude and the scope of the influence exerted by this discipline 
in humor readily becomes apparent. 



Chapter VII. 

IMAGINATION. 

This is the royal faculty of the mind, the chief principle 
and agent of all aesthetic conception, and of all artistic pro- 
duction, whether in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, 
poetry, fiction, or social discourse. The general ineptitude 
observed in conversation today is mainly due to the fact that 
imagination enters so feebly in to it. A prerequisite of good 
conversation is a lively imagination, aided by a graceful 
fancy. These, properly brought to bear upon daily converse, 
confer upon it life, force, and beauty. Without these, 
human speech becomes wearisomely prosaic or utterly un- 
meaning. Therefore, exercises in colloquial imagination 
form a most important part of this course. There are vari- 
ous phases of these exercises. One of them consists in call- 
ing the subject's attention to instances of the successful use 



62 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

of this magical faculty in the novels of our great authors. 
As Shakespeare's work is, owing to the dramatic form, 
mainly conceived in dialogue, it will very well serve our pur- 
pose. Let us turn to Act I., Scene II. In the last passage : 
King Henry urges haste to meet the French 



"Therefore, let our proportions for these wars, 
'*Be soon collected and all things thought upon, 
*'That may with seasonable swiftness add 
"More feathers to our wings; — 



The king desires that everything should be devised that is 
likely to expedite preparations. The author's mind which 
is strong, fiery and vivid, immediately paints to himself a 
concrete action analogous to the abstract one of enhancing 
swiftness and in the corruscation of mental electricity the 
lively trope ^'add feathers to our wings" is born. Images 
arise from the deep suffusion of thought with emotion. It 
is emotion, which, by its strong vibrations, increases the 
momentum of the thought and invests it with clear outlines 
and vivid coloring. Thus aesthetic emotion, which ever 
tends to emphasize an idea, does so by seeking in the material 
or physical realm concrete symbols for abstract thoughts. 



The Art of Conversation. 63 

This is illustrated in Act 11. , Scene IV., when it turns upon 
the title of the King of England to the throne of France. 



Exeter speaks : 

That you may know, 
" 'Tis no sinister, nor no awkward claim, 
"Picked from the wormholes of long vanish'd days, 
"Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak'd, 
"He sends you this most memorable line," 



And further on, Exeter again : 

"Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, 
"In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove," 



Still further on : 

"On the poor souls, for whom this hungry war 
"Opens his nasty jaws;'' 



Then at random from the same play : 

"Impious war arrayed in flames, 

"While yet the cool and temperate wind of grace 

"O'er blows the filthy and contagious clouds 



64 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

*'0f heady murder, spoil and villany." 
— All counfounded, all — 
^'Reproach and everlasting shame 
Sit mocking in our plumes, — 



Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Richard III., King Lear and 
Othello teem with vivid and even exaggerated metaphors. 
A special study of the Shakespearian metaphor would be of 
great value in awakening a vivid sense of figurative lan- 
guage. 

Another excellent exercise would consist in studying the 
tropes found in English and American poetry of the first 
order as well as in essays and in the descriptive passages of 
works of fiction. 

A few random passages from the poets will illustrate the 
nature of this exercise : 

''Whose bright eyes rain influence." 

''Most lame and impotent conclusion!" 

"Freedom shrieked as Kosciusko fell." 

"Honest labor wears a lovely face." 

"Knowledge her ample page did ne'er unroll." 



The Art of Conversation. 65 

"Frame a ladder of our vices." 

"Broad ocean leans against the land." 

"Scatter plenty o'er a smiling land." 

"Many a rose is left to blush unseen." 

"To pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow." 

"Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars." 

"Soul's calm sunshine and heartfelt joy." 

"Spires whose silent fingers point to Heaven." 

"Rich with the spoils of time." 

"The evening beam that smiles the clouds away 
And tints tomorrow with prophetic ray." 

"Jocund day stands tiptoe on the mountain-tops." 

"Though his tongue dropped manna." 

"She speaks poniards and every word stabs." 

"Stabbed with a white wench's black eye." 

"Soothing the raven down of darkness." 



66 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

''Beauty born of murmuring sound." 

"The soul of music slumbers in the shell." 

"The fitful fever of life." 

"Steeped me in poverty to the very lips." 

A few^ illustrations of striking figures of rhetoric will be 
taken from our essayists : 

Lowell. 
Describing the vividness of an author's descriptions. 

"Everything leaps into vision in that sudden glare with a painful 
distinctness that leaves the retina quivering." 

"He sees history, as it were, by flashes of lightning." 

"He is in the condition of a man who uses stimulants, and must 
increase his dose from day to day as the senses become dulled under 
the spur." 

"Meanwhile the world's wheels have got fairly stalled in mire and 
other matter of every vilest consistency and most disgustful smell." 

"He repeats himself with increasing emphajis and heightened 
shrillness." 

"Warning has steadily heated toward denunciation and remon- 
strance soured toward scolding." 



The Art of Conversation. 67 

Emerson. 

'■Sport is the blcom and glow of perfect health." 
"They wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influences." 
"The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can 
shake his will, but, pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances 
to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of 
universal dissoluteness." 

"When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, 
pours for a season its streams into me — I see that I am a pensioner — 
not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water." 

"Produce a volume of Plato or Shakespeare, or remind us of their 
names, and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity. See how 
the deep divine thought demolishes centuries, and milleniums, and 
makes itself present through all ages." 

Carlyle. 

"A hatred, a hostility, inexorable, inappeasable, which blasts the 
scoundrel, and all scoundrels ultimately, into black annihilation and 
disappearance from the scene of things." 

"Nature keeps silently a most exact savings bank, and official 
register correct to the most evanescent item — " 

"Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest." 

"That a new hour had struck on the time Horologe, that a new 
epoch had arisen; slumbrous Europe, rotting amid its blind 
pedantries, its lazy hypocrisies, conscious and unconscious." 

"Only a Goethe has force to keep, even at the sun of good fortune, 
his phoenix- wings unsinged," 



68 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

"Wealth bears heavier on talent than poverty; under gold moun- 
tains and thrones, who knows how many a spiritual giant may lie 
crushed down and buried !" 

Carlyle quotes from Richter : 

"No one in creation is so alone as the denier of God; he mourns 
with an orphaned heart that has lost its great father, by the corpse 
of nature, which no world-spirit moves and holds together, .... 
The whole world lies before him, like the Egyptian Sphinx of stone 
half-buried in the sand; and all is the cold iron mask of a formless 
eternity . . . ." 

John Morley. 

"Such contrasts are the very stuff of which Tragedy, the gorgeous 
muse, with the sceptered pall, loves to weave her most imposing 
raiment." 

"There are many politicians in every epoch whose principles grow 
slack and flacid at the approach of the golden sun of royalty." 

"Makes no difference ... in the grat- 
itude that is owed to the stern men who rose up to consume her 
and her court with righteous flame." 

Examples like the preceding ones might be multiplied in- 
definitely, but it is hoped that a sufficient number has been 
given to enable the student to seek others of his own im- 
pulse. It would be contracting a very helpful habit to mdke 
a collection of all the vivid figures one meets with in litera- 



The Art of Conversation. 69 

ture. It would tend to inculcate a strong sense of imagery 
and later on the remembered images would serve insensibly 
as models upon which the mind could frame figures on its 
own account. 

Though poetical imagery is earnestly recommended as a 
discipline, it is well to make haste to say that not much of 
this is to be used in ordinary colloquy. Average conversa- 
tion, even of a high order, is more severely moderate in the 
employment of the fancy than any other mode of verbal ex- 
pression; and the type of imagination the most appropriate 
to it is the colloquial. This refers to the combining power 
of the intellect brought to bear upon the exigencies of social 
intercourse, which differ vastly from those of oratory, de- 
scription, poetical reverie and meditation. A good modem 
play, especially a comedy, gives the best imaginable ex- 
ample of an ideal conversation. The plays of Shakespeare 
present us with dialogues having, with all their excellencies, 
two serious disadvantages. The dialect is that of an earlier 
day and the order of imagination displayed is in most cases 
too poetical for the severe chastity which reigns in the col- 
loquial English of our day. They are works of genius, it is 
true, and they are unsurpassed in their disciplinary value, 
but they are distinctly disqualified to serve as patterns for 
contemporaneous imitation. Let us then be prepared on 



70 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

the one hand for a constant study of the Shakespearian 
dialogue for the purpose of acquiring the spirit of the col- 
loquial excellencies with which it teems, and on the other 
for an almost equally constant avoidance of its particular 
verbal forms and even of its often-times exuberant poetical 
imagery. 

Now that we have paid our tribute to v/hatever of poet- 
ical imagination may be needed in our course of training, 
let us hasten to address ourselves to the types of imagination 
more immediately suitable for the embellishment of conver- 
sation. The first of these is Wit — a quality which presents 
itself under a number of phases. Under a liberal accepta- 
tion of the term, it may be taken to include all forms of in- 
tellectual playfulness or ingenuity, while in a narrower sense 
it is opposed to that form of intellectual playfulness called 
Humor. It seems best for our present purpose to take it in 
the narrower sense and to call attention to that particular 
phase of it which is best suited to conversation and which, 
indeed, exists only as one of its elements, namely. Repartee. 
This is the name universally given to a quick, bright reply 
which, like all traits of wit, occasions a pleasing surprise and 
thereby gives rise to a mode of aesthetic emotion. Repartee 
gives the effervescent quality to conversation and streaks the 
dull gray horizon or ordinary talk with lightning flashes of 



The Art of Conversation. 71 

wit ; it is pre-eminently the principle of colloquial brilliancy. 
He who is gifted with this particular grace of speech brings 
a talisman of delight into every circle he enters. Repartee, 
first of all postulates the indispensibly quality of relevancy, 
which, strange as it may seem, is often lost sight of in the 
conversation class, though less frequently in actual inter- 
course. The reason for this is that in the class the student, 
under the pressure of his newly acquired ideals, feels that he 
must be brilliant and often in thinking of something bright 
to say, forgets what has been said to him. Thus the answer 
is not as relevant as it might be and such an answer is by 
that very lack inapt whatever other merits it may have. As 
the essence of repartee is a piquant relevancy, in the study 
of the former the latter is also necessarily acquired. No 
better examples of either can be found anywhere than in the 
Shakespearian drama. Take the scene between Rosalind 
and Orlando in the forest of Arden — ''As You Like It,'' Act 
XIV., Scene I. That between Benedict and Beatrice — 
''Much Ado About Nothing,'' Act L, Scene I. The court- 
ship dialogue between the King and Catherine of France, 
"Henry V," Act V», Scene 11. Scene between Gloucester 
and King Henry VI, in the tower — "Henry VI., Act V., 
Scene VI., etc. 

Congreve and the other famous dramatists of the Restor- 



72 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

ation also present us with an abundance of lively dialogue, 
but the license of the period almost disqualify them for the 
study of youth. As has already been stated above, modern 
plays furnish us with the best colloquial models imaginable. 
'The Rivals,'' 'The School for Scandal,'' and "London As- 
surance," all help to train the sense of appreciation for spark- 
ling talk. The dialogue passages in novels are often ex- 
tremely clever and are worth serious study. Bulwer's nov- 
els are particularly rich in colloquial quality. Pelham serves 
as a text book in conversation. Examples of piquant col- 
loquy and repartee might be adduced without number, but 
a little passage which happens to be at hand from the Ger- 
man author, Maximilian Bern, will amply serve our purpose 
in this place. 

Julia — "You here, sir!" 

V. H. — "Whom else did you expect?" 

Julia — "Another equally unexpected visit." 

V. H. — "You were about to say unwelcome visit." 

Julia — "Perhaps. It would be hard to qualify your behavior in 
too strong terms. Is there anything you want of me?" 

V. H.— "More than I could tell in a life-time !" 

Julia — "I could scarcely grant you an interview of such duration. 
Let me see — ^you — are about forty years of age." 



The Art of Conversation. 73 

V. H. — "Dear me, how ungallant ! I am only thirty- seven." 

Julia — "Thirty-seven, then, if you think a difference of three years 
will serve to palliate your behavior. You might live to be eighty." 

V. H. — "How cruel to predict so long a duration of life." 

Julia — "Most inconsiderate people live to be very old. Thirty- 
seven from eighty leaves — " 

V. H.— "Forty-three." 

Julia — "Forty-three years, yes. Now, sir, if you fancy I can grant 
you an interview of forty-three years — indeed, I can scarcely allow 
you so many minutes." 

The v^hole play is continued in this train, and constitutes 
an excellent model for bright and refined conversation. 

The main points to be noted are on the one hand that the 
answers or replies are alw^ays pat and relevant, that is, are 
closely linked both to the matter and the v^ords of the pre- 
ceding questions or observations, and, on the other, that the 
ingenuity v^ith v^hich pleasing surprise is introduced to en- 
hance the effect of the relevancy, does not seem to have been 
sought for, but to come spontaneously and almost inevitably 
as a result of the situation or the mood of the speaker's mind. 
This is v^hat is called the natural evolution of dialogue — the 
principle and guarantee of all easy conversation. Where it 
exists, all seem well ; where it is absent all is forced, stilted 



74 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

and wearisome. A good exercise consists in arranging the 
students in a circle with two in the center who are required to 
engage in repartee. The two in the center are the only ones 
who will actually engage in the performance. The others 
will ofifer suggestions and criticisms. Let us propose to the 
two actors in the dialogue to suppose a passage at repartee 
between a young girl and her male cousin whom she is visit- 
ing in the country. He had been teasing her the day before 
and she is now in a petulant mood with him and, and petu- 
lance is a frame of mind in which one is naturally disposed 
to retort. This indicates one of the secrets of framing 
dialogues, which is first to put one's subjects in the mood 
appropriate to the character of the conversation which you 
desire them to carry on. A love-passage must be under- 
taken by lovers, one of malignant retort by enemies, one in 
which the current social amenities prevail should be put in 
the mouth of friends and so on. But now, for our young 
repartitants : 

"Good morning, Cousin Lill. !'' 

"Alas, that it were evening!" 

"And why, pray?" 

"That would mean one day less in your company." 

" Tis hard to entertain me, cousin, Fm so critical." 

"Critical, indeed You're as dull as ditch-water." 



The Art of Conversation. 75 

''Why, now, perhaps you are right. Tis so hard to be brilliant 
where there is no beauty to inspire one." 

" Tis hard, rather, to radiate inspiration where there is not wit 
enough to catch the ray and reflect it back." 

"You have set me down as an idiot, dear cousin, perhaps you'll 
continue your gracious work and make a hunchback of me as well." 

"A hunchback ! Then it zvould be hard for you to unbend." 

"You have been here a week and have never said or done a kind 
thing to me in all that time." 

"O, the ingratitude of consanguinity ! 'Twas only yesterday I 
defended you for half an hour before a large company." 

"On what charge, pray?" 

"Poetry, and thanks to my zeal, you were at last unanimously 
acquitted for want of evidence." 

Such little dialogues can be composed as often as the 
students find time, the oftener the better. The effort must 
be to pit idea against idea and expression against expression. 

A large class of anecdotes are indebted to the principle 
of repartee for their grace and charm. 

A few examples of historical anecdote which come under 
this head follow : 

The poet. Waller, was an egregious turn-coat. He was a con- 
spicuous adherent of the popular party during the great English 
revolution. He was subsequently won over by the royal party. 
Later on he supported the Protector and dedicated to him some 
glowing stanzas of eulogy. Upon the restoration he greeted the 



76 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

accession of Charles II. with loyal praise. This clever Prince, how- 
ever, remarking upon the superiority of the strains which he had 
devoted to Cromwell, the poet wittily replied: *Toets, sir, succeed 
much better in fiction than in truth." 

It was at Coblentz where the throng of emigres were gathered 
during the Revolution and Empire. One was relating how Napo- 
leon, the victorious, had been hailed on all sides with the greatest 
rejoicings and the most fulsome flattery. The nauseous praise of 
one eminent divine was quoted who, among other things, said: 
"God made Napoleon and then rested." The Count de Narbonne, 
one of the wittiest of the exiled nobles, observed dryly that it was a 
great pity God had not rested before. 

The famous Bishop Butler was, before his preferment, filling a 
modest charge in the provinces, where he lived in the greatest 
retirement. His friend was seeking to interest Queen Caroline 
in his elevation. ''Bishop Butler !" exclaimed the queen, "Why, I 
thought he was dead." "Not dead, your majesty,'' replied the loyal 
friend, "hut buried" 

The student, especially he who studies alone, should often 
ponder these examples of repartee and then make repeated 
efforts to construct either dialogues like the foregoing, or 
anecdotes in the fashion of those just cited. In the last anec- 
dote quoted it will be seen that the point turns on the double 
use of the word ''buried," its literal and its figurative use. 
The same motive can be used by the student to frame an 
analogous anecdote. Let us indicate the process. The 



The Art of Conversation, 77 

word "crisp'' has two meanings, one literal and physical 
(i. e., easily broken), the other figurative (i. e., bright, lively, 
piquant) . ''You had a crisp dialogue with her father when 
you asked for her hand, didn't you ?" ''Crisp, I should say 
so! It broke right in two before I had finished my first 
sentence." 

The word "apprehend" has two meanings — "to under- 
stand" and "to arrest." It takes no great strain on the im- 
agination to suppose a situation where both meanings miglit 
be employed with facetious effect. Weary Watkins and 
R.usty Rufus are resting under a tree by the waysic'e. Rusty 
Rufus, who affects precision of speech, speaks : 

'•'You think we can reach Castle Rest before tomorrow night, 
Watkins, but I apprehends." Watkins — "Rusty, don't use that term, 
'apprehend.' It sounds — hem — pedantic. That is, I suppose, as I 
once heard an eminent lecturer say, it's the mysterious spell of 
association." 

One's little colloquial performances are not expected at 
first to shine with the utmost brilliancy, but they are ex- 
pected to improve in acuteness of point, in delicacy of touch, 
and in remoteness of allusion. This, however, is the result 
of practice alone. 



Chapter VIII. 

COURTESY. 

Too much stress can hardly be laid upon the injunction 
to practice Courtesy. Apart from the fact that it is the most 
urgent of social duties, it is also the arch-disciplinarian in 
social culture and the fountain-head of the most delicate wit 
that man can conceive. There is in the Anglo-Saxon a 
rooted indisposition to make himself agreeable by paying- 
compliments, and a very especial continuous discipline is 
requisite to eradicate the tendency in him to remain indiffer- 
ent to the subtler needs of his fellow-men, among them the 
craving for approbation, admiration and praise. More suc- 
cess in conversation, in repartee and wit, even, will result 
from this altered disposition of the subject than from any 
other exercise yet indicated. The average Anglo-Saxon 
will find his imagination severely taxed at first to meet the 



The Art of Conversation. 79 

demands for courtesy made upon him by the exigencies of 
society in the Hght of his new ideals. A certain class of 
readers will no doubt express ^surprise that politeness will 
produce wit, for with many politeness means only to say 
/'thank you/' ''if you please/' ''will you kindly/' and to use 
such other popular phrases as will occur to anyone who has 
become familiar with the social formulas of our middle- 
class circles. This, however, is not the type of courtesy we 
have in mind. Courtesy, when one has become skilled in it, 
inspires all manner of gracious compliments wh'ch diffuse 
an aroma of elegance and refinement in a circle that nothing 
else can confer. Let us illustrate by a celebrated example 
which is too beautiful for repetition ever to stale. Sydney 
Smith, the eminent English divine who was in his day the 
greatest wit and finest gentleman in Great Britain, was one 
day leading a party of guests about in his garden when a 
young lady suddenly exclaimed : "O, Mr. Smith, these 
sweet peas have not yet come to perfection !" The gallant 
clergyman taking the lady by the hand said with a smile : 
"Then allow me to lead perfection up to the sweet peas." 
The faculty of such charming speech as this one, which 
emanated from the bright and gentle heart of Sydney 
Smith as naturally and easily as the perfume from its 
flower, would vastly add to the social efficiency of most 



80 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

other men. Striving to be courteous exercises the 
imagination by the most laudable and effective means. 
Therefore the strenuous endeavor to practice courtesy- 
will soon be found to have borne golden fruit. This, how- 
ever, will not take place until after the pupil has learnt 
through the practice of months, perhaps of years, to assume 
with ease and grace the attitude of courtesy or gallantry. 
Those who feel the responsibility of enjoining politeness 
upon our youth, seem to fancy that they have done their duty 
when they have delivered themselves of their bald precepts 
to say or do this or that thing upon such or such an occasion. 
What our children should be taught — and that as early as 
possible — is, that no opportunity should be lost to say agree- 
able things to people in whose company they happen to find 
themselves. Without that sentiment so deeply ingrained in 
their nature that it operates by spontaneous and even un- 
conscious inspiration, they will never achieve the triumph of 
becoming the instruments of a graceful and refined social 
life. Without such a keen sense of social amenity they can 
never enjoy an absolute guarantee against the invasion of 
stiffness, dullness or insipidity in the social circle. 



Chapter IX. 

THE EVOLUTION OF COLLOQUY. 

The Evolution of Colloquy 

The almost universal wail that one does not know what 
to say in the social circle, is due to the fact that the imagina- 
tion is untrained. This has already been. pointed out, but 
now the student will be given the model for an exercise in 
conversation which he can pursue for himself and even by 
himself — in the privacy of his own room. He can in this 
way institute for himself a little colloquial laboratory. To 
whatever sex he may belong let him vividly represent to his 
consciousness that he is in the company of another person. 
In order to make the scene as vivid as possible, depict to the 
mind a specific scene and keep its details in view. It will 
save trouble and clear the metal decks for the main business 
in hand if the scene can be concretely represented just as is 



82 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

done on the stage. Let us suppose the actor is a lady and 
she is setting herself the problem of successfully entertain- 
ing^a gentleman at tea. She is to have the table and the 
complete set of tea things before her. The tea must actually 
be made and offered and poured into the cups. It must be 
sweetened and cream must be presented, or lemon slices or 
preserves, after the Russian fashion. It is astonishing what 
a difference it makes in the capacity of things to inspire sug- 
gestion, to have them in actual substance before one. To 
simply fancy that a cream pitcher is before one will forward 
one but little in conversation ; because the mere representa- 
tion of the object in the mind through the memory, though 
entailing constant labor, is feeble ; and still more, because it is 
indefinite. But the real object before the eyes is vivid and 
definite, and hence suggestive of some thought or fancy. 
I have seen the prettiest conversation started by some allu- 
sion which was suggested by the design on a piece of painted 
china. Hence the necessity of actualities : first, as labor- 
saving devices, and, second, as definite sources of inspira- 
tion. 

This exercise will prove an invaluable gymnastic to pre- 
pare the subject for the real exigencies of the colloquial 
circle, because she will have to play a double role. She will 
have to be alternately lady and gentleman. 



The Art of Conversation. 83 

First, let these two persons engage in a talk, from which 
the element of imagination has been wholly omitted. It will 
have the advantage of impressing upon those who read it 
the value of an ingredient whose absence results in such an 
appalling void. They talk as follows : 

He — Lovely weather today, isn't it? 

She — Yes, indeed. Shall I give you a cup of tea ? 

He — O, thank you. Til take it with pleasure. 

She — Do you take cream and sugar or do you take lemon 
— or preserves ? 

He — Lemon and sugar, please. 

She — Do you like it strong ? 

He — If you please. 

This is enough for our purpose of illustration. The 
reader will appreciate the absolute blankness of such an in- 
terchange of civilities. In spite of the formulas of amenity 
which succeed each other, this type of intercourse is not 
civilized; for civilization in social commerce implies the 
power of givng pleasure. And no pleasure is here possible 
for the colloquy has remained unillumined by a single ray 
of imagination. But the desert may be made to bloom. 
Let us see how an oasis may be introduced into the waste 
places. We will first lay down a rule or two for guidance. 
First, our inspiration takes its rise in the occasion, the scene 



84 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

or the circumstances at hand; after that it springs directly 
out of the thoughts and words of the person with whom we 
are speaking — our interlocutor, as the French say. Thus 
after the first sentence has been exchanged, the person 
whose turn it is to speak has, as we say, the burden of the 
initiative, that is, he has to think of something. If he is 
enHghtened, he will conceive his duty seriously — which is 
only another way of saying that he will go to some expense 
of imagination. If he succeeds in doing so then his inter- 
locutor's duty is to throw back the ball and so the game 
proceeds, if the players are skillful. If, however, the person 
who has the initiative does not rise to the level of the situa- 
tion, but, not having the fear of colloquial censure before 
his eyes, delivers himself of a platitude, then his interlocutor 
has a fine opportunity of coming to the rescue, and all may 
yet end well. 

Second, let the converser be constantly on his guard 
against ante-social forms of reply. His replies should never 
fail to be so framed as to suggest or stimulate rejoinder. 
This ensures the continuity of the commerce. But if his 
sentences are delivered without any regard to this main- 
tenance of connection, the result will be to keep the burden 
of colloquial responsibility on the shoulders of his vis-a-vis. 
Should the latter be equally unsocial in his habits or facul- 



The Art of Conversation. 85 

ties, the result will be a blank, as in the foregoing example. 
Sentences thus unsocially framed are termed extinguishers ; 
because they do effectually extinguish intercourse, in so far 
at least as the transaction is a credit to the human intelli- 
gence involved. 

Let us go back to our pair at their tea and see how they 
conducted themselves. 

When he said: ''Lovely weather, isn't it?'' he was not 
brilliant, but it was not absolutely necessary that he should 
be. The initiator has, to a certain extent, the advantage 
over his interlocutor. What one starts out with does not 
matter so rnuch. It is the repartitant upon whom the pros- 
perity of the passage depends. He stands or falls by the 
imagination he expends or withholds. We shall, therefore, 
allow the introductory remark to pass. But she must rise 
to the occasion and say something which is at once animated 
and relevant. In answer to his remark about the weather, 
she might have exclaimed: ''O, you rash man! I was 
present when the weather, religion and politics were ban- 
ished from the colloquial court by royal decree, and now you 
appear with the first of the exiled trinity at your heels. How 
dare you!" ''O, really now, Miss X., you exaggerate my 
misdemeanor. This transgression is quite exceptional, I 
assure you. The day was so very lovely that on the principle 



. 86 Art of Conversation and Impromffu Speech. 

of sweets to the sweet, I felt justified in introducing the fair 
to the fair." 

''Well, I must confess, you have the art of making your 
peace with people, whatever you do. I accept your explana- 
tion as perfectly satisfactory. To prove it Fll give you a 
cup of tea.'' 

'T could ask for no more convincing proof. When a 
woman presents a man with a cup of tea it means something 
quite especial. Madam, I hope your intentions are honor- 
able !" 

"I have no ulterior designs whatever, that is, of a sin- 
ister character. I only want to bring you refreshment.*' 

'To do that madam, you have but to appear on the 
scene.*' 

"Upon my word, you make me feel like a lunch-counter. 
Lemon ? and how many lumps of sugar ?'* 

"One, please. But why do you hurt my feelings ?'* 

"You're irrelevant, sir. But one thing mystifies me. I 
know, from having heard it a thousand times, that the mem- 
bers of my sex are the ornaments of the universe, the flow- 
ers in the garden of humanity, the pride, the glory, the bless- 
ing and the delight of existence ; but I also observe that ever 
increasing numbers of males sedulously eschew appropriat- 
ing to their own permanent use the living embodiments of 



The Art of Conversation. 87 

so many advantages. Is this d*-e to a wave of asceticism 
that is sweeping over the whole male sex? Let us hope 
they will not carry it too far." 

''Ah, now, you are growing cynical at our expense. 
That's not exactly hospitable." 

''I protest. Cynicism isn't becoming to my sex. I 
never wear anything that isn't becoming. I do all I can to 
make myself attractive to the dominant half of the race. I 
am very anxious to please." 

"I needn't tell you that you perfectly succeed — in a 
charming, piquant way of your own." 

''O, yes, I have no doubt, I'm like a horse radish, at- 
tractive by dint of pungency." 

''You have fathomed the masculine secret, I see. Who 
told you we hated undeviating concurrence from the gentle 
sex?" 

"You don't fancy for a moment, I hope, that your sex 
has any monopoly of the degree of taste and intelligence 
which that feeling implies. Unconditional surrender of 
opinion beforehand announces either servility or imbecil- 
ity. And either of these qualities is repellant to a generous 
mind." 

This may continue indefinitely along this line. It will 
be observed that the character of the dialogue gradually 



88 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

passes from the mere exchange of light and airy amenities 
into a distinct interchange of thought and sentiment. It is 
not proper, however fertile one's mind may be, to begin 
bombarding people with ideas as soon as one opens con- 
versation with them. The commonplaces of civility justly 
claim a place here, excepting always the cases in which one 
addresses near friends or relatives, when they are necessari- 
ly omitted. Commonplaces serve as a screen from behind 
which people who are strangers to each other cautiously peep 
out to catch traits of mind which may suggest extending the 
talk in more significant and personal directions. 

This illustration, however, was given solely for the pur- 
pose of showing how slight a thread the imagination can 
avail itself of to hang its conceits upon. Nothing so trite, so 
insignificant that is not suggestive to the well-trained mind. 
The weather is a topic which has been worn so threadbare by 
being for untold ages the unfailing resort of those who have 
nothing to say — those who are too indolent or too impotent 
to think and too unimaginative to invent — that it is usually 
tabooed in select circles. Yet even that can be readily 
availed of as a handle for a lively observation by any ex- 
perienced converser. 

Let us suppose our young people to have held the insipid 
colloquy first given, minus the opening remark about the 



The Art of Conversation. 89 

weather. Let the lady begin with, Shall I give you a cup 
of tea ? Even then it need not proceed in the inane manner 
illustrated above. The gentleman, fastening his attention 
upon the words of the lady — for he must needs do this to 
secure relevancy — will detect his opportunity for reply in the 
word "give," which naturally suggests the question of the 
deserts of the recipient. He may then answer if he chooses, 
*Tt is very kind of you, but are you sure I deserve it ?" In 
the word "deserve,'^ he has introduced a new idea into the 
colloquy, and to this the lady must address herself, especially 
as his sentence has taken an interrogative turn. If she is 
dull, she will say, "O, I think you do,'' "I hope you do," or 
"Fll give it to you whether you do or not." But all of these 
forms have the demerit of not forwarding the talk. On the 
contrary, their direct effect is to extinguish all colloquial 
life — they are, in the most emphatic sense of the word, ex- 
tinguishers. The reader must here learn to give extension 
to his moral sense by inventing a new commandment : Thou 
shalt not leave to thy neighbor all the burden of discourse, 
but shalt diligently acquit thyself of thy share of the task. 
This should not remain a mere passive conviction of the in- 
tellect, but it should pass into the realm of will and govern 
conduct. One should feel guilty of a moral transgression 
who is conscious of having failed in colloquial duty. 



90 Art of Conversation and Impromffu Speech. 

The lady, if she has a sense of colloquial vivacity — and 
no woman^s education is complete who has not acquired it — 
will say, perhaps, '*0, Fm quite sure you don't deserve it, 
but I give it to everybody who comes along. * * * >' 

''Regardless of creed, color or previous condition of ser- 
vitude r 

''O, yes ; I treat henpecked husbands with peculiar suav- 
ity. They challenge my pity as well as my contempt.'' 

'T was fondly hoping that I might be favored the least lit- 
tle bit." 

''O, it's too early to determine that. Wait till you see 
how many cups I invite you to take. I simply drown some 
people in tea. They can't talk and swallow at the same time, 
you see." 

'*Ah^ I perceive. Your system is simple and ingenious. I 
have never heard of tea as an instrument of self-defense be- 
fore. But when you stop a minute to think it seems both 
natural and effective " 

"And so civilized. Won't you have another cup, Mr. 
X?" 

*'0h, I a7n favored. No, thank you ; if you will gracious- 
ly permit me to take leave of you, I'll saunter out and try 
to picture to myself the feelings of the submerged tenth." 

The student will see from the foregoing examples just 



The Art of Conversation. 91 

what the colloquial process implies. At every sentence ut- 
tered by his interlocutor the converser must make drafts 
upon each of his faculties in turn, according to the exigencies 
of the moment. The idea presented in the question or re- 
mark addressed to him must stimulate an idea in him, and 
to this idea he must seek to give graceful and lively expres- 
sion. The man or woman who would excel in this great 
art of human intercourse is earnestly enjoined to pay no heed 
to mistaken zealots who plead the cause of slovenliness under 
the name of simplicity and of brutality under the name of 
frankness. The arts by which pleasure is communicated 
through speech are worthy of the most serious and contin- 
ued attention. Nothing can be neglected with impunity 
which is capable of giving relief to an idea when expressed 
in language. Even as a painter studies the most elusive 
means in the endeavor to secure subtle effects, so will the 
sagacious converser make his art the object of equally loving 
and keen attention. Let him not forget that courtesy is the 
greatest inspirer of bright speech. Indeed, it may be said 
that if a speech is polite enough it will be witty enough ; 
for refined and delicate courtesy is itself a species of wit. 
Allow no opportunity of courtesy to pass without availing 
yourself of it to the full extent of your ability. This will 
generate the unselfish habit of mind which is at the bottom 



92 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

of all true breeding. Acquire the habit of making your im- 
agination play about the slightest topics you handle. Study 
carefuly the style of authors who are experts at this art and 
seek to reproduce passages that strike you as being partic- 
ularly piquant. All these things will help to develop your 
imagination, — and the nimble exercise of imagination is, at 
bottom, the secret of captivating conversation. Is it neces- 
sary to add that for months daily exercise by oneself and 
weekly exercise in a class will be indispensable to success? 
I think the reader understands this. 



PART II. 



IMPROMPTU SPEECH. 



PREFACE. 



The conviction of the author, arrived at through personal 
experience and observation, is that most systematic works on 
pubhc speaking fail because they load the student's mind at 
once with new theory and new practice. The present humble 
volume is designed as a series of exercises whose purpose is 
to free the subject from the thraldom of self-consciousness 
by simply forcing him to appear before an audience under 
the very easiest conditions of speech possible. When he no 
longer becomes frightened at the sound of his own voice, it 
will be time to proceed to more systematic, and, if need be, 
more complex methods. 

It is but imperfectly appreciated that in teaching a pupil 
to speak in public we have a two-fold task on our hands. 
We must first cure him of a mental disease, namely, a 
morbid self-consciousness that paralyzes all his faculties; 



98 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

and then we must train these hberated faculties. To begin 
training the mind before Hberating it would constitute a 
grave fallacy of instruction. The exercises in Definition 
and synonym discrimination outlined in the first part of 
this volume, are for this purpose of liberation, to be per- 
formed by the pupil on the platform, or at least standing on 
his feet. This reduces the mental labor to a minimum and 
thus enables the pupil to give his whole mind to the task of^ 
learning to think and talk on his feet. The classic injunc- 
tion in these cases is ''Constant practice under competent 
criticism." 



INTRODUCTION. 



I think it may safely be asserted that there is hardly a 
member of the great inarticulate phalanx of humanity who at 
some period of his life or on some specific occasion has not 
bitterly regretted his inability to command orally the re- 
sources of his mother tongue. 

In this age of universal organization the purposes of hu- 
man concert are daily bringing it home to men with increas- 
ing emphasis on the one hand that it is very convenient to 
have the gift of ready utterance, and on the other, that very 
few men seem really to possess it. 

Untoward as the situation is, and humiliating as it may be 
to the sense of human dignity, it is yet true that, unless there 
is some practical pressure put upon a man to drive him to 
wrestle with this problem and to resist the handicap of the 
limitations imposed on his activity by his verbal deficiencies, 

LofC. 



100 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

he easily resigns himself to eternal silence at the club ses- 
sions, locking for the most part within the penetralia of his 
bosom, alike his sense of discomfiture at his own failure 
and his envy of the talents of more favored brethren. When, 
however, a definite purpose outlines a prospect of success, 
conditioned on the capacity for ready public utterance, 
an energetic individual is often seen embarking in a hot pur- 
suit for the coveted faculty. 

Many, indeed, and touching are the perplexities which at- 
tend the average aspirant to the honors of eloquence. The 
vicissitudes of his quest would often be supremely comical 
were they not primarily tragical, and while there is a consid- 
erable range of incident and resort the classic tradition of 
this pathetic odyssey may be summed up in a triad of expedi- 
ents — a course in rhetoric, one in parliamentary forms and 
a third in elocution and oratory. 

After a season of study in rhetoric during which he is 
often a prey to consuming impatience and doubt, the dis- 
gusted student finds that he has learned many technical 
terms of the science of composition and perhaps written a 
few themes, but that he has acquired nothing whatever to his 
purpose. In the study of parliamentary law he has gained 
some knowledge of the conditions under which the proceed- 
ings of deliberative bodies take place, but of the main pro- 



Impromptu Speech. 101 

ceedings themselves, of speaking and debating, he is as pro- 
foundly ignorant as ever. 

In the elocution class he at best became proficient in the 
art of rendering, with suitable gesture and vocal modulation, 
selections from literature — that is, pieces that have been 
composed by others, but, as he feels with dismay, he is as far 
as ever from being able to compose an address of original 
purport. 

At this moment the weary wanderer in search of guid- 
ance is prone to give way to despair. He sees that what he 
needs is the power to translate his own thoughts and senti- 
ments into adequate language with such readiness and fluen- 
cy that he may be able to deliver himself orally at a moment'.^ 
notice. This, he begins to see, is the one phase of his educa- 
tion that has been absolutely neglected — the one urgent need 
for which neither church nor state, nor school, nor home, 
nor, indeed, any of the various agencies of guardianship that 
profess responsibility for the career of the individual, have 
seen fit to make provision. It occurs to him, perhaps now 
for the first time, by conscious reflection, that command of 
his mother tongue for the practical purposes of life should 
form part of every man's primary outfit. He is apt to feel 
that it is now too late for him to acquire what ought to have 
been begun in early youth and continued throughout his 



102 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

school course. Hence the resignation we so often witness to 
an inarticulateness that has come to seem inevitable. 

However, it is precisely at this juncture that w^e hope to 
intervene and rescue the disappointed student from despair. 
Let us, before outlining the formal drill, glance for a few 
minutes at some of the ordinary phases of discourse, and 
show how they can be availed of for purposes at once prac- 
tical and disciplinary ; for the exercise in language which u 
pupil goes through with serves him at once as an instrument 
of daily use and a valuable discipline for the general 
strengthening of his faculties. 



NARRATION. 

It has been truly said that narrative is everywhere the sta- 
ple of discourse. The truth of the proposition may be more 
readily conceded than the fact of its universal advantage. 
However that may be, it is certainly true that we are very 
legitimately called upon in life to do a great deal of relating. 
But I doubt whether it is as notorious as it should be that 
the prevailing standard of narration is in most communities 
deplorably low. If any one has anything to tell, it is verv' 
rare that the way of telling it becomes a matter of consider- 
ation. The words and phrases are tossed forth helter skelter 
without arrangement, and often with but Ihe slightest co- 
herence. The narrator has apparently no ambition beyond 
the practical end of conveying to his hearer or hearers the 
mere substance of his account. That the performance offers 
a field for the legitimate and commendable exercise of syn- 
tax, rhetoric, sense of form, taste and imagination, rarely 



104 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

occurs even to those whose intelligence would seem to war- 
rant a more flattering imputation. At a period when the 
word, art study, seems to have become the supreme shib- 
boleth of culture, it may not be amiss to declare that the 
simplest narration cleverly managed, may become distinctly 
a work of art, and a far more valuable exercise of the sense 
of art than mere contemplation of pictures; because while 
the latter is only passive, the former is beautifully and 
triumphantly active. 

It is sad, indeed, to see how in our efforts at narrative 
and description we neglect, nay, mutilate our opportunities. 
We find at an early stage of the business that we have omit- 
ted precisely the point on which the interest mainly depends. 
We make digressions to repair omissions inadvertently made 
at the beginning ; we repeat a part of the action in order to 
make modifications to it, and when we have done we 
discover that our description falls short of the effect we had 
fondly anticipated because we have not had the skill to bring 
in the collateral appendages in their proper order or succes- 
sion. Now, it is imperative to him who aspires to relate or 
to describe in company, to do it well ; for if he acquit him- 
self blunderingly of his task, he not only fails to give pleas- 
ure, but he inflicts positive uneasiness — that uneasiness 
which is at once torture and tedium — torture because, as a 



Impromptu Speech. 105 

duly sensitive member of a company, one feels keenly the 
awkward position of the inexpert describer or narrator, and 
tedium because one's attention is being claimed without the 
compensation of entertainment. Now, these unfortunate 
contingencies can be avoided only by the conscientious prac- 
tice of this style founded on good models and subjected to 
the criticsm and guidance of experts. Let the student train 
himself for a few months in the art of discribing all manner 
of incidents — ^battles, duels, sieges, encounters with wild 
beasts, hunting scenes and adventures, horse, bOat and foot 
races, boxing matches, street fights, runaways, robberies, 
fires, drownings, rescues, falls, explosions, riots. Car^ 
should be taken to insure an advance in excellence in each 
succeeding performance. An error of style in number one 
should on no account be repeated in number two. The great 
variety of subjects described will compel the student to look 
up many new words which, used in their proper connections, 
will greatly add to his vocabulary and be readily retained by 
the memory. 



DREAMS. 

A most interesting and profitable exercise is the descrip- 
tion of dreams. It is often a severe test of one's mastery of 
language. This is due in most cases to the singularity of 
one's experience during the hours of slumber. The mind 
seems at such times to take' on new faculties and new sus- 
ceptibilities, one might almost be justified in saying new 
senses. Who has not at some time in his dreams tasted food 
whose exquisite savor had no counterpart in his experience 
of actual life, smelt the odor of flowers that must have grown 
on the borders of Paradise, beheld scenes of enchantment 
whose figures were bathed in ''a light that never shone on 
land or sea?" Has not the reader more than once been 
awakened from a dream in which he had conversed with 
certain persons on topics that had no place in the categories 
of this world, and in a dialect spoken by no nation on earth ? 
Dreams and visions will undoubtedly tax one's powers of 



Impromptu Speech. 107 

description to the utmost, but the exercise is greatly to be 
recommended to the student who feels himself matured 
therefor by thorough previous drill in the more easy forms. 
Practice makes perfect, here as elsewhere, and assiduity will 
find an early reward not only in the ease and accuracy at- 
tained, but even more often times in the aesthetic effect of 
the description. A young lady under class training was so 
elated at the brilliant description of a dream which she 
achieved that she ascribed it to supernatural agency. As a 
matter of fact, it was only a clear account of a beautiful vis- 
ion that had made a vivid impression on the mind — the im- 
mediate factors of success being the direct results of train- 
ing; i. e., a copious flow of words and close attention to the 
record of details as supplied by the memory. 



PERSONS AND CHARACTER. 

Another mode of description which requires more than 
ordinary training and acuteness of the intellect is that which 
relates to the person, both as to bodily features and char- 
acter. This should be studied with minutest care as to de- 
tail and effect. Herein as elsewhere we are fain to resort 
to literature for our models. There are authors who have 
a magic touch at pen portrayal. These must be studied in 
their most intimate processes, dissected, analyzed and pon- 
dered until the very secret of success is caught. Especial at- 
tention must be given those delineators who have the skill to 
seize the characteristic feature or gesture or moral habit of 
an individuality, so that at one stroke it stands clearly re- 
vealed to the reader. 'This gift of deft characterization is 
one which is almost indispensable to him who aspires to 
make personal description a feature of his conversation ; for 
the short duration of the process adapts it perfectly to the 



Impromptu Speech. 109 

exigencies of colloquy where economy of time is imperative 
and where to inflict tedium is the capital transgression. 
While in circles that pursue conversation as a fine art, the 
story teller is discouraged because of the occasional monop- 
oly which the exercise of his talent necessitates, there is no 
company that does not welcome one who in briefly delivering 
himself of a telling incident, has the power of bringing forc- 
ibly to the mind the image of a well-known type by a felic- 
itous stroke of description, that requires only an instant of 
time. Hence the value of rapid and effective character 
sketching and personal description. It goes without saying 
that in monologue as well as in colloquy, rapidity of process 
in portraiture is indispensable. 



SPECIAL OBJECTS OR PHENOMENA. 

Nothing will more readily give a person a correct idea 
of the extensiveness or scantiness of his stock of words than 
the attempt to describe a variety of objects with whose na- 
ture and composition he is unfamiliar. A case in point is 
that of a young author who puts his hero and heroine on the 
deck of an ocean steamer where he made them walk, sit, talk, 
lean, watch and comment upon the movement and speed of 
the vessel, etc. He declared once in relating the circumstance 
that, while he himself had crossed the ocean and was 
familiar by sight with all those parts and appliances of a 
steamer that are most exposed to view, he was not able to 
designate a single one of them by name; so that three or 
four of the pages of his manuscript where such parts were 
referred to, were filled with blank spaces which he was sub- 
sequently at no small pains of inquiry and investigation to 
fill out. The same thing happened to him with respect to a 



Impromptu Speech. Ill 

fox hunt whose operations and characteristic incidents he 
could not name. This illustrates the necessity of constantly 
varying the objects of description when engaged in 
the exercise. The student should strain his memory 
and imagination to increase the list of these objects, pe- 
ruse newspapers and periodicals and visit picture galleries 
with the sole view of discovering new objects of description. 
Let the mind embrace everything that can be thought of — 
ships, public edifices and constructions, bridges and monu- 
ments, pageants, processions, marching armies, assemblies 
in hall, outdoor gatherings, encampments, political conven- 
tions, caucuses, election crowds, decoration day perform- 
ances, embankments^ balloon ascensions, mining shafts, 
plantation scenes, locomotives, railroad tracks and all that 
pertains to the train and its operations, the engine rooms, 
machinery in the various factories, the tools and appliances 
of the different trades and professions. All the various parts 
which compose complex objects together with the mechan- 
ism which forms the principle of their motion, should be 
learned by name and systematically applied until all these 
new terms and ideas have become a permanent part of the 
mind's stock. The student will have the satisfaction of hav- 
ing increased his verbal resources and converted what was 
before only vague and misty notions into clear and definite 



112 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

ideas that are thenceforth ready for instant use to his vari- 
ous purposes. The feeHng that precision is the first of vir- 
tues and vagueness the besetting vice of expression will be 
stimulated in him much to the advancement of his aesthetic 
mterests. These thousands of new terms which he will have 
learned will moreover greatly extend the circle of his free- 
dom in the territory of language. For in verbal intercourse 
AS in every other department of human life, culture is syn- 
onymous with freedom and all restraint is due to that sense 
of thraldom which is born of a conscious lack of means. 
Every new word acquired is a manacle stripped off — another 
link broken in the chain of lingual bondage. And when 
by earnest study and constant practice the student will have 
drawn within the sphere of his service all forms of expres- 
sion and risen superior to all the verbal limitations that had 
beset his path and impeded his movements at the outset of 
his career ; then, and then only, will he be able to walk free- 
ly, firmly and gracefully on the plain of discourse. 

There yet remains a suggestion before closing this chap- 
ter. In order to consummate the mastery of expression the 
student is enjoined to add to his resources by applying him- 
self to the analytical and critical study of such authors as are 
most likely to conduce to the general excellence of his style, 
by cultivating his taste, strengthening his judgment, exer- 



Impromptu Speech. 113 

cising his reasoning faculty, and furnishing him with abund- 
ant subjects for reflection; for, as has been said before, the 
form of language as well as its substance, ideas, must go 
hand in hand to insure the interests of culture^ — ideas and 
expressions constantly react upon each other to mutual 
benefit — to get a new idea is to sharpen one's wits to find 
expression for an old one; to hit upon an expression is to 
strengthen the mind and enable it the sooner to conceive a 
new idea. As to his choice of authors for the above men- 
tioned purpose, the student will naturally be guided by the 
suggestions of his teacher. But, whatever else may be se- 
lected for his improvement the student would do well to 
commit to memory De Quincey's essays on Conversation, 
Language, Murder as a Fine Art, James Russell Lowell's 
essays on Shakespeare and Rosseau, those essays of Lamb 
which strike him most favorably and a few of the shorter 
pieces of Hawthorne. Swift and Bunyan are to be recom- 
mended for their masterly use of Anglo-Saxon idioms and 
the essays of Addison' for ease and elegance. 

What Dr. Johnson said with regard to the influence of 
the last named author on those who are desirous of forming 
a pure and chaste English style, is known to every school- 
boy, and may be repeated here to advantage for those who 
saw in it a sentence merely and not an item of personal ad- 



114 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

vice. We should say emphatically commit to memory as 
much of Addison as you can contrive to retain without in- 
jury to your mental fabric. The committing of such long 
extracts will have the effect of developing the sense of rhe- 
torical harmony, coherence, vivacity, symmetry, fitness and 
all the other forms of artistic sense without which all en- 
deavor to achieve a fair degree of excellence will be in vain. 
These exercises may seem to some to have a terribly 
deliberate and perfunctory character. But we crave the 
reader's indulgence. Let him remember first, that in any 
case, it is due the pioneer in a new line, especially in a new 
department of education, not to forestall his efforts by a 
distrust of his methods ; and, secondly, that, being unaccus- 
tomed to seeing language dealt with as an art,^!t will require 
some time for him to fully appreciate the fact that, hke every 
other art, it can be acquired only by persistent practice in 
what must often seem tedious, technical exercises. 



^^^M 



DEBATE. 

Not long ago in a company where the matter was dis- 
cussed, a gentleman eminent for his good taste and judg- 
ment declared it his belief that High School boys owed 
whatever merit they gave proof of less to the regular train- 
ing of the school than to the discussions and debates they 
practiced in their several school societies. The reason of 
this was, he argued, because the debates and the discussions 
constituted actual arenas in which their abilities and powers 
had opportunity for serious engagement. 'The next best 
training schools,'' he continued, ''are the bar, the stump, and 
the legislative hall.'' The sooner the young man gets there 
the better for his budding genius. It's practice he wants, 
not theory." So the student of language can not too early 
be drawn into the practice of the art he is pursuing. The 
debates on the issues of the day are eminently well calcu- 
lated to constitute the initial form of dialogue to which he 



116 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

turns. First for the reason that the personnel of the dis- 
course being restricted to two, the process is much simpler 
than if a greater number were engaged in it ; and, secondly, 
because the subject of debate being usually settled upon be- 
forehand, the participants get time to reflect upon the sub- 
ject assigned. Besides these debates, turning as a rule on 
very practical subjects and being of universal interest, tend 
amazingly to stimulate original speculation and excite senti- 
ments of patriotism in the youthful breast. What in view 
of this could be more profitable than for the young student 
of language to begin debating on the tarifif, the silver ques- 
tion, woman suffrage, immigration, the various aspects of 
the labor question, etc. ? 

The young American has opinions on everything. He 
has imbibed at the paternal board views, sentiments, and 
prejudices. To be sure, he starts out in life a fullfledged 
partisan ; but his very partisanship will sharpen his wits to 
find arguments with which to support his preconceived 
opinions— and all this will be to the gain of language and 
speculative power, until by dint of reflection he modifies his 
views for the better. 



DISCUSSION. 

Even more fruitful than the debates will be the general 
discussions of current events which is to succeed them in 
the order of training exercises. The newspapers and peri- 
odicals will as a matter of course supply the subjects for dis- 
cussion. The effect of this practice, apart from inspiring a 
salutary interest in what is going forward in the world and 
stimulating a love of inquiry, will be to equip the student 
with a vast fund of terms accommodated to the expression 
of familiar objects and incidents ; for even in this most prac- 
tical and prosaic department, most of us are but indifferently 
well provided with words. To get some conception of the 
wide area over which these discussions will take the student 
there is need only to review the headings of the ordinary 
newspaper columns. Here we find pestilences and wars, 
fires and storms, business failures, elopements, divorces, 
weddings foreign and domestic, births, deaths of distin- 



118 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

guished men, reviews of their careers, shipwrecks, railroad 
collisions, establishments of new institutions, publications of 
new doctrines, accounts of new movements, social, political, 
religious, economic, records of national and local legislation, 
measures of administration, election news, disclosures of 
political corruption and mismanagement of asylums and 
charitable institutions, burglaries, embezzlements, suicides, 
murders, assassinations, etc.; etc., all inviting description, 
narrative and comment and affording ample themes for 
speculation. 



BOOK REVIEWS. 

The students should then turn to an exercise sufficiently 
analogous to the preceding to justify the anticipation that 
the latter has served as an effective preparation for the for- 
mer, yet sufficiently distinct to warrant the hope of great 
future gains from it. Each pupil should in turn name some 
classic novel for the whole class to read. The pupil choos- 
ing the book should "be required to assume the role of leader 
in the discussion in which all should be invited and encour- 
aged to share equally. The leadership should never on any 
account be construed into a monopoly or despotism. On the 
contrary the leader should be understood to be the host of 
the company and to have given particular attention to the 
subject in question, only to consecrate his information to the 
service of others. He must be expected to challenge those 
who are backward to join in the talk, to give a pointer to 
this one to call for the opinion of that one, and in short, to 



120 Art of Conversation and Impromfiu Speech. 

keep the ball rolling less by his own actual participation than 
by the activity which he stirs in others. In certain cases, it 
may be expedient for the teacher to assume the work of di- 
rection at first, but it should, as soon as possible, be com- 
mitted to the pupils in turn. 



REFERENCE TO RECENT VERSE, FICTION 
AND PHILOSOPHY. 

New works of verse and philosophy, as well as the best 
specimens of fiction, should be discussed as soon as they 
appear. The tendencies of modern thought and sentiment, 
the various phases of literary movement, and the relations 
of these several manifestations to the conditions of human 
life should form the staples of discourse. This exercise will 
serve not only to give a vigorous impulse to youthful specu- 
lation by the serious conversations induced, but it will equip 
the student with a new set of valuable tools — the vocabulary 
of literary and philosophic criticism. 



ALLUSION. 

As allusion constitutes one of the chief charms of litera- 
ture, so does it infuse into conversation the peculiar graces 
that are inseparable from literary interest and the literary 
flavor. It is the only legitimate means by which in the 
social circle an idea of one man's tastes and acquirements 
may be conveyed to the mind of another. It is the accepted 
shibboleth in the ranks of the lettered and the test of one's 
fellowship in the freemasonry of culture. The taste of the 
day is, it must be confessed, adverse to copious allusion and 
it is easy to see how in the hands of one who lacked a due 
sense of fitness this propensity might degenerate into an of- 
fensive pedantry. However, let us hasten to assure the read- 
er that the ranks to which such disparaging reflections are 
likely to occur are by no means identical with those to whom 
this work is addressed. Literary allusion, like many another 
accomplishment, may be advantageously dispensed with only 



Impromptu Speech.' 123 

by those who have mastered it. It is not those to whom it is 
an unknown realm, that can afford to despise it. Indeed, 
our classic authors furnish the best examples of its abundant 
use, and even their master, Shakespeare, has frequent re- 
course to it as a literary expedient. But it is chiefly as a 
means of developing the colloquial faculty that we have here 
to do with it, and as such it is to be warmly recommended. 
Experience has proved that there is hardly any exercise 
more effective in stimulating a sluggish memory or arous- 
ing a slumbering imagination. The gift of allusion is one 
of the greatest bulwarks which a healthy mental activity has 
against the encroachments of decay. It leads out of the 
memory cells where they were in danger of stagnating or of 
being utterly dispersed, the events and personages of history 
and the characters of fiction, introduces them to each other, 
makes them. play roles in the pages of new works, and in the 
living speech of new men, before ever fresh and eager audi- 
ences. It was allusion that threw out the life-preservers in 
the sea of oblivion to which were found clinging the names 
and fragments of Sappho, Menander, and a score of the 
brightest names in literary history. It is the seal which the 
instinct of the cultivated puts on the solidarity of human 
thought and the league of human sympathy. Let the pupil 
peruse the classics of literature and carefully scan the allu- 



124 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

sions contained therein, explain them to the satisfaction of 
the teacher and in each case make an earnest endeavor to 
emulate the practice by an original application. Allusion 
is divided according to its nature into Poetical, Historical, 
Literary, Scriptural, Mythological, Philosophical, and Scien- 
tific. To the class scientific we may refer also the allusions 
to the pseudo sciences, such as Alchemy, Astrology, etc. 
All these appear one after another or gracefully blend in 
the literature and speech of men. How few books there are 
in which historical and scriptural allusions are not made? 
Mythology has for three thousand years furnished poet and 
novelist with rhetorical devices ; and though today recourse 
to its treasures is no longer as frequent and cordial as it once 
was, it yet offers suggestions so pertinent that they can never 
be wholly ignored by those who think, write and speak. 
The tailor-made style of speech and literature may be ever 
so firmly established in popular favor, it is not likely that 
the lover will ever cease to feel the sting of cupid's dart or 
to see a miniature Venus reflected in the eyes of his mistress 
• — Aurora will still draw aside the curtains of night and the 
Fates will still control the destinies of men ! The visions 
that inspired our poets will come in the still evening to adorn 
our reveries or stimulate eloquence in the moments of love's 
frenzy. The discoveries of science will obtrude themselves 



Impromptu Speech, 125 

on our memory when we are seeking analogies and compari- 
sons and the latest doctrines of our philosophers are faith- 
fully reflected in our conversation and literature. But of all 
forms of allusion, that which relates to the characters of 
classic fiction are today the most frequent and popular. Not 
only do such devices add both interest and variety to the 
speech and pages they adorn, but they are great factors in 
the preservation of the names of authors in popular esteem. 
Many an author lives today solely in the sphere of literary 
allusion. How many of those who refer to Dante's Inferno 
have ever read a page of the Divina Commedia? Does an 
enthusiastic reference to Petrarch's Laura imply an inti- 
mate acquaintance with that poet's work? Tasso and 
Ariosto are, indeed, living names, but is it not a superficial 
vitality due mainly to an unbroken tradition of literary men- 
tion? The Canterbury Tales and the Fairie Queen are 
vivid titles, it is true, but your bookseller might give you 
startling information as to the sales of these books. The 
Novum Organum may still be read by savants and students 
of literature or of human progress, but to the great majority 
of readers it is little else than an honored name — an epitaph 
to which many a thoughtful observer of literary fates might 
fittingly add, ''Hie jacet." Not only to the obsolete and the 
obsolescent has this pious reference to name done effective 



126 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

homage, but who can measure the services it has rendered 
to even the most Hvc of our authors? What author's re- 
nown has it not extendeJ for beyond the sphere of the 
natural circulation of his books? How many are not daily 
moved to seek a book because some interesting reference has 
been made to it by another or in the speech of a fellow man ? 
Many an author, returning to earth, would be surprised to 
learn that his works were no longer read and that he owed 
whatever fractional immortality he possessed to some trick 
of character or incident that had been caught up by the 
trumpet of allusion. There is something beautifully hu- 
manitarian and grateful in leading our literary acquaintances 
from out their narrow book-frames and making them a part 
and parcel of our active, bustling lives, as we do through the 
medium of familiar oral allusion. It gives a broader inter- 
pretation to the maxim, 'Tell me whom you go with and I'll 
tell you who you are;" and it serves as a letter of mental 
introduction to convey to our new-met fellow men that we 
have enjoyed the same noble literary acquaintanceship as 
they. How we warm towards those who, at a feast, whether 
literal or figurative, like Oliver Twist call for more. What 
a cordial kinship we acknowledge to those whose sense of 
humor has hung up the portraits of the Micawber family in 
the foreground of their mental picture-gallery! With 



Impromptu Speech. 127 

whom do we not enjoy lazily lapsing into poetry with Silas 
Wegg, or with that same worthy passing airily over the hor- 
hors of the decline of the Russian empire out of deference to 
the ladies? These things all serve to cement the bond of 
human fellowship and make the world kin. They furnish 
our conversation with a set of universal standards which 
we all gratefully accept; and no one can less afford to dis- 
pense with these resources than the youthful student who 
has had neither time nor experience to pass in his knowledge 
of human nature, from the types of large classes to the 
species which compose them. To whatever vagaries of re- 
form in literary taste some captious minds may have aban- 
doned themselves, the cautious and conservative pupil will 
cling to this expedient as one of the main factors of mental 
readiness and a powerful lever in the mobilization of the 
mind's furniture. 

As may be inferred from the foregoing classification of 
allusion, the subject is as wide in scope as human knowledge 
and human life itself, and under its head we shall include, 
for the sake of discipline, all direct reference by proper or 
common names to any art, science or class of facts not indis- 
pensable to the subject in hand. We shall select but a very 
few out of the innumerable examples of allusion with which 
our literature swarms. 



128 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

Shakespeare. 
Mythological. 

"My fate cries out 
And makes each petty artery in this body 
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve." 

"Ay, they do my lord, Hercules and his load, too. 

"One speech in it I chiefly loved ; 

" 'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido. 
"And thereabout of it, especially where 
"He speaks of Priam's slaughter, 

"The rugged Pyrrhus like the Hyrcanian beast." 

"Then senseless Ilium seeming to feel this blow." 



DRILL IN PUBLIC SPEAKING. 

We will now take up the formal drill and show the laws 
of speech in active operation in the more ordinary occasions 
of monologue. As it is acknowledged a sound principle of 
instruction to begin dealing with the simplest forms and 
gradually handling those that are more complex, we shaJl 
first confront the pupil with the comparatively slight task of 
Introduction. 

Just here we desire to emphasize the word comparatively, 
for it is certain that even the briefest introduction requires 
no less than the longest address, the marshalling of almost 
all the qualities of mind which constitute eloquence. In- 
deed, it may be said that the art of making an introduction is 
an even more infallible test of character and taste than a 
longer address. A man may make a fine speech and yet go 
completely under in the effort to achieve an introduction. 
This is easily accounted for by the fact that the main speaker 



1.^0 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

on any occasion has no legitimate rival in his claims upon 
the attention of the audience, and is therefore hampered in 
the disposition of his material, and the determination of his 
time limits only by the general conditions of such an occa- 
sion. He who introduces another has additional considera- 
tions to observe, the foremost one of which is the presump- 
tion that on the one hand the audience is eager to make the 
acquaintance of the main speaker ; and on the other, that the 
speaker himself is equally desirous of embarking upon his 
role. The obvious policy of the introducer is, therefore, 
self-effacement. Any infraction of this canon can only re- 
sult in one of those tragi-comedies of which Max O'Rell 
relates a striking instance. 

He was once introduced to an audience by a gentleman 
who spoke an hour and a quarter upon the merits of the 
prospective speaker. The latter, upon receiving his cue, 
stepped before the footlights merely to congratulate his 
hearers upon having enjoyed a peculiar treat in the elo- 
quence of the gentleman who had just spoken; and to ex- 
press the hope that he himself might some day likewise 
have the pleasure of addressing them. The rebuke was 
no doubt all the more keenly felt because the coarseness 
of the perceptions of the transgressor was thrown into such 
vivid light by the delicate expression of his victim's resent- 



Impromptu Speech. 131 

ment. This example will serve perhaps better than any 
precept to show what was meant by the mode of introduc- 
tion constituting a test of character and taste. It must be 
plain that the social outrage in the instance quoted above 
was due mainly and primarily to the inordinate personal 
vanity of the transgressor. He evidently clutched with 
more eagerness than wisdom at the opportunity of giving the 
assembly before him a copious dose of his personality, re- 
gardless of the feelings either of the mass of his hearers or 
of the titular orator of the evening. There was not only 
vanity involved in the source of this blunder, but ignorance 
as well. This incident illustrates the advantage which a 
man of the world has over a provincial, namely, that, while 
he may be quite as tainted with vanity, he has nevertheless 
the saving grace of good-breeding which impels him to sup- 
press the manifestations of this vice in deference to the social 
claims of others. 

From the foregoing observ^ations the discerning reader 
has already doubtless inferred that one of the most impor- 
tant laws of the introduction speech is that which governs 
the time-limits. It may be said that on ordinary occasions 
these might range from three to ten minutes. A legitimate 
extension of this maximum to fifteen minutes would cer- 
tainly imply a combination of circumstances of very infre- 



132 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

quent occurrence. A case therefore that would justify an 
even longer address in so simple a matter is absolutely in- 
conceivable to the present writer. One who is desirous of 
making a success of public appearance would do well to 
make it a point of honor to condense his introductory re- 
marks so as to deliver them within the space of three min- 
utes. It will require some thought at first, some arrange- 
ment and some concentration ; but the habit of economy of 
means which accrues to him from the continued practice is 
one which will richly reward his efforts. It makes wonder- 
fully for sincerity of purpose, for considerateness, for force 
and clearness. 

The next point to consider is the substance of the address. 
In introducing a person who is well-known, it is a good 
expedient to set down on paper or on the tablets of one's 
mind all the claims of the prospective speaker to the atten- 
tion or gratitude of the public, to arrange them on an ascend- 
ing scale of importance and deliver them in one concen- 
trated, forcible and harmonious period. If there are too 
many of these claims, some of the lesser ones may be safely 
omitted, for, let it be promptly established, it is the essence 
of the etiquette of such an occasion that the supreme celeb- 
rity of the subject should be assumed. Now the pregnant 



Impromptu Speech. 133 

brevity of the introduction is the expression of this assump- 
tion. 

In the case of a person of eminent worth but of a fame 
which is restricted within the limits of a particular class, 
as, let us say, a geologist or an astronomer, the Introducer 
may consider himself as a herald or even an extender of the 
fam^e of his subject and he may very properly trench by a 
fev/ minutes on the established time limits. 

Another aspect of the performance which is to be jeal- 
ously kept in view is its opportunity for the exercise of social 
amenities in a more positive form. A lively and ever vigil- 
ant sense of courtesy as often renders great service in embel- 
lishing a meager reputation as it does in bringing into relief 
a more brilliant one. A performance is not unfrequently 
stripped of all its attractive qualities by a lax exercise of 
that delicate social benevolence which we call courtesy. In 
Anglo-Saxon civilization the claims of courtesy are, as a 
rule, rather too summarily disposed of ; and it would become 
the members of the new generation to take them a little 
more seriously into their account in estimating the means 
and forces of civilized life. 

To sum up our remarks, let us lay down the proposition 
that in an Introductory address the three cardinal points to 
be observed are Pertinence, Concision, and Courtesy. Which 



134 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

is to say that the subject-matter must be strictly applicable 
to, and characteristic of, the individual of whom it is predi- 
cated; and this subject-matter must be expressed both briefly 
and politely. 

Let us assume that we are introducing a distinguished 
magistrate the diffusion of whose fame leaves nothing to 
be desired : 

''Ladies and gentlemen, the man who rendered valiant 
service in the hour of his country's direst peril and after- 
wards stood in the forefront of American politics, fighting 
the battles of American Protection, needs no introduction 
to an American audience — for whom, indeed, his figure 
stands boldly outlined against the horizon of contempora- 
neous history. It is therefore as a mere matter of form that 
I introduce to you to-night Governor W. H. McKinley, who 
will address you on the issues of the campaign.'' 

I have chosen this subject because I once had the oppor- 
tunity of seeing it grossly abused on the occasion of a cam- 
paign address. The few words given above adduce all that 
is necessary in deference to the law of the occasion and they 
are pronounced in less time than one minute. The Litroduc- 
tion must take place as a social ceremony, the subject's wide 
fame must be assumed ; hence only the briefest reference to 
it as a complimnt to the distinguished guest is admissible. 



Impromptu Speech. 135 

This, moreover, must be invested with all the forms of 
politeness possible on this side of excess. 

Let us take another example : 

''Ladies and gentlemen : Our present distinguished guest 
has so many and varied titles to your admiration and grati- 
tude that, in view of my time-limits, I cannot but esteem 
it a piece of good fortune that your profound acquaintance 
with his career makes their enumeration on my part wholly 
unnecessary. Whether I mention the strenuous pioneer 
of the western plains, the able author of many valuable 
works, the fearless commissioner who boldly carried the 
standard of civil service reform into purlieus where the 
foiled serpents of political corruption hissed their rage 
and hate; or the hero of Santiago whose impatient but 
noble ardor carried everything before him; I but indicate 
a group of facts which constantly occupy the foreground 
of your consciousness. You will therefore permit me 
without further delay to introduce to you the Hon. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, who will entertain you with his char- 
acteristic force and frankness on the issues of the cam- 
paign.'' 

This, though a little longer than the preceding, also takes 
less than a minute for deliverv. The same motives underlie 



136 Art of Conversation and Imprompiu Speech. 

them both. It is necessary at once to assume both as a mat- 
ter of fact and as a measure of amenity that the facts are 
all thoroughly and widely known ; and yet as a matter of 
ceremony to make a compendious reference to them. This 
is always the problem of the Introductory formula — to con- 
ciliate the interests of form with the exigencies of courtesy 
within the narrowest possible compass. 

There is no salvation outside of these conditions. As 
for the rest, it is not desired to propose any absolute models 
to the student. Each one has his own style, which is not 
to be superseded by a foreign one or in any way perverted. 
Each must respect the style native to him, subjecting it to no 
violence or change any further than is necessary to correct 
excess in any direction. Not all are susceptible of achieving 
the utmost degree of concision. Some are by their consti- 
tution addicted to dififusenesss. The effort of the teacher, 
or, in default of that, of the student himself, must be strenu- 
ously directed to curing the excess of that quality without 
disorganizing the native style. It has been well said that 
a man's virtues and vices spring from the same stock and 
that to destroy the latter utterly would be to deprive the 
former of their vitality. There is accordingly a point be- 
yond which correction must not be carried ; and if a teacher 
be so far successful as to inculcate in a pupil, who was 



Impromptu Speech. 137 

wont to take ten or twelve minutes for an exercise, concision 
enough to reduce the time to six or eight minutes, he must 
be fain to accept these comparatively unsatisfactory limits 
for a space at least and leave further development in this 
direction to the slower but certain operation of time. The 
fact that other pupils may have made twice the progress 
along this line should not discourage him. 

Nothing is more remarkable than the diversity observed 
among pupils with reference to the mode in which their 
imaginations play with a given subject. Some of them 
may scarcely be said to represent in their utterances the play 
of the imagination at all, so dry and so colorless is all they 
say. Others take pleasure in the splendor of imagery and 
revel in figures of rhetoric. A favored few distingish them- 
selves by a chaste and graceful simplicity of style, which 
wins by a purity without precision and a harmonious flow 
without monotony; while to a certain class of minds intel- 
lectual sportiveness is the very breath of life ; so that all 
they treat moves in a mellow, genial atmosphere of humor 
or serves as a source for the fireworks of wit. These are 
but a few of the primary colors of style which unite in 
infinite combinations and blend with each other, producing 
infinite shades and tones, all organic to the individual and as 
unmodifiable in their essence as the color of the subject's eye 



13H Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

or the shape of his nose. The function of the teacher or 
guide is solely to lop off excrescences, to obliterate defects 
that are obviously remediable and to reclaim the pupil from 
pernicious habits into which he may have fallen. Beyond 
this, interference is invariably fatal; for personality in all 
essential traits is sacred; it is only the accidents of person- 
ality that are legitimately amenable to modification. 

Let us consider a moment the few primary qualities of 
style we have enumerated and ascertain, if may be, what the 
teacher's attitude should be towards them. Where, as in 
the first mentioned, the style is dry and absolutely lacking in 
all the qualities which are said to relieve composition, 
whether oral or written, it is plainly the teacher's duty to 
attempt to instil into the pupil a taste for aesthetic quality. 
If the instruction is to succeed, the order of aesthetic devel- 
opment as indicated by nature must be observed. Now the 
sense of beauty is first awakened in the human soul by per- 
ception. Perception repeated gives rise to observation. 
Observation is succeeded by rapturous contemplation, — 
which we call appreciation. It is only after appreciation 
has fermented for a time in the soul that it becomes a motor 
force — a force strong enough to impel to reproductive 
activity. The great problem in aesthetic training is to make 



Impromptu Speech. 139 

the mind take the step which separates the passive state of 
appreciation from the active state of creation. However, it is 
not impossible, in many cases, to bring the pupil to take this 
step : but it takes time, efiori and patience. The unfortunate 
pupil who is the prisoner of a dry and unattractive style can 
only break his bonds by the unremitting study and analysis 
of those specimens of composition which embody in a 
supreme degree precisely the qualities in which he is most 
lacking. He must read them over and over again. He must 
take one imaginative passage after another, weigh it, dissect 
it, explore it and leave no means untried by which he may 
discover the secret of its beauty. When he has done so, he 
must forthwith seek to imitate it, but only, of course, as a 
means of discipline, as an expedient for saturating his soul 
with, the effect, the essence and the movement of passages 
which have achieved the triumph of beauty. This is not 
fantastic. It has been tried and tried successfully. Indeed, 
the pages of biography teem with the records of such experi- 
ments. It may even be said that enthusiastic study and imi- 
tation represent the first stage of the poet's career. In the 
very process of imitation the poet's mind evinces its native 
tendency by an unerring instinct, on the one hand of selec- 
tion; and on the other of rejection. 



140 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

The pupil who presents the contrasted vice of floridity 
must be confronted with specimens of oratory which shine 
in virtue of their classic purity and the chaste reserve of 
their style. A bright pupil soon becomes very apt at detect- 
ing extravagances in his style and his readiness to eliminate 
passages which violate good taste rapidly increases. The 
continuous spectacle of what is correct and elegant gradually 
bears fruit in stimulating emulation. This is the very logic 
of this system of the constant contemplation and imitation 
of the best models. One becomes steeped in the element 
desiderated. It is conceded on all hands that environment 
has much to do with one's inspiration ; but it seems to me 
that the fact has not been sufficiently appreciated that a 
factitious environment that is skilfully adapted to a specific 
purpose is fully as efficient as an adventitious one. 



PRESENTATION. 

It has been my lot to witness social ceremonies of which 
the presentation of some object to an esteemed person was 
the central act. In few cases^ indeed, has it seemed to me 
that adequate wisdom had presided at the performance. For 
the most part there was a timid and uncertain, not to say 
awkward tender of the object presented, accompanied by 
an almost inaudible comment or two, making of the matter 
a scene in which the audience bore hardly more than a visual 
part. When it did happen that the presentator possessed the 
verbal faculty at all, he usually spoke too long and too dif- 
fusely. Once or twice in my life I have been regaled with 
the spectacle of a presentation ceremony which left nothing 
to be desired. On such occasions the speaker supplied in a 
becoming manner, as to speech, look, gesture and vocal ac- 
cents, just what was requisite and nothing, absolutely noth- 
ing, more. It was like a small but compactly constructed 



142 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

edifice from which not a piece, not a stone, could be spared. 
Every part ol the diminutive address fell into its place — 
which would have remained a void if it had not been sup- 
plied. It requires just such an occasion to give the auditor 
an experience which could not otherwise come so vividly 
within his range. A narration of it would be but a pale copy 
and would fail of half its effect — which is to bring home to 
one how much delight may be derived from the slightest oral 
performance which has been either unconsciously or deliber- 
ately availed of with success as material for the sense of 
form to exert itself upon. It is as if one saw a graceful 
pastel or water color. A few such perfect occasions would 
suffice to impress a discerning mind with the fact that form 
should be observed in all phases of utterance, that it is in 
fact the test of culture to see opportunity for realizing beauty 
in an ever-widening circle of activities. 

Now, to turn to the practical part of the subject. What 
must be the first consideration for one preparing a presenta- 
tion speech ? The answer to this query involves no mystery 
whatever, yet nothing seems to be so rare as to look the 
matter squarely in the face with whatever of common sense 
one happens to possess. In fact, the most sensible people 
often make haste on such occasions as these to abdicate their 
reason, as if they suspected that it stood in their way. 



Impromptu Speech. 143 

''What shall I say ?'' exclaims the bewildered seeker after 
inspiration. The answer must be that in this, as in every 
case in which speech is contemplated, counsel must first be 
taken of the actualities. What are the circumstances? To 
whom is this cane presented and why ? In token of admira- 
tion for gifts of mind ? In gratitude for services or benevol- 
ence? Whatever the answers may be, they represent the 
data you have to handle. This process is so far the w^ork of 
the reason which, used thus in treating the homely affairs of 
life, we call common sense. Now the moment has come to 
invoke the aid of a new faculty, the imagination. Do not 
suppose that, because I separate it from reason, it is in any 
w^ay to be considered as opposed to that august faculty or 
contrasted with it. On the contrary, imagination is made of 
combining the elements of consciousness. This is the func- 
tion of reason as well, only the combination over which 
reason presides alone serves exclusively the interests of the 
understanding; while the product of imaginative arrange- 
ment ministers to the sense of beauty. Therefore, imagina- 
tion is sense but not common sense. You may call it if you 
like uncommon sense. Each has a definite role to play where 
speech is to be employed to meet both a practical and an 
aesthetic demand. Common sense is your purveyor. It puts 
your material in your hand. Imagination is, so to speak, 



144 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

your steward and decorator. It shows you how to dispose 
them in wise and beautiful order. 

Let us suppose the case of a man representing a com- 
mittee in the bestowal of a cane to a gentleman who had 
aroused their enthusiastic gratitude by establishing a flower 
mission in the slums. 

The process for the pupil is clearly to gather together as 
data, the actualities of the case and to regard them for better 
or worse as the source of his inspiration. Outside of that 
there is no salvation. This can hardly be repeated too often ; 
for the bane of a language teacher's life is' the tendency of 
pupils, when the moment comes to exercise the imagination, 
to look upward agape at the sky as if they expected flakes 
of inspiration to drop down upon them from some invisible 
and unattainable, but magical empyrean. Look neither up- 
ward nor downward, but hold your level glance upon the 
material in hand. There or nowhere is your ideal! 

What, then, in the present instance are your actualities? 
They are briefly and simply : first^ a benevolent man whose 
bounty has provided flowers for the daily delectation of the 
wretched poor; secondly, the appreciation of his fellows,' 
which the act called forth ; thirdly, the result of the preced- 
ing in the gift of the cane. These you are to take in turn and 
set them before you. As you place each item before you 



Impromptu Speech. 145 

you must consider it a centre from which Hues radiate in 
every direction to other objects in its compact environment 
of things and thoughts, of conceptions and images. These 
Hnes form organic connections with the datum you already 
have in hand, and with other things you at first thought 
not of. Thus new combinations are formed which often- 
times take very graceful shapes and which embellish while 
they enforce the thought they express. 

Let us put in the centre our first datum, the benefactor 
himself. What does he suggest ? Why clearly benefaction. 
Just so. Now then does it require any undue exertion of the 
representative faculty to proceed from benefactor in particu- 
lar, i. e., our present subject whom we see, to the general 
type of benefactors ? Certainly not, if our mind is in work- 
ing order at all. Then we have now one hook on which to 
hang a passage. Let us keep track of it. What kind of a 
benefactor is ours? Did he give his beneficiaries bread, or 
meat, or oatmeal? No; he gave them flov/ers. He had 
evidently heard that men lived not by bread alone, and, rash 
man ! he had had the hardihood to extend the application of 
the proposition beyond highnesses, royal and democratic, 
gigsmen, etc., to the wretched and filthy denizens of the 
slums. Truly, a remarkable man! But that is not all. 
Flowers themselves radiate lines in all directions and salute 



146 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

an infinity of objects in their environment. Flowers are un- 
disputed sovereigns of a vast territory of human affairs and 
have extensive international relations. Mythology, religion, 
history and poetry cheerfully acknowledge their sw^ay. The 
proteges of the trees, the confidantes of the zephyrs, the 
messengers and interpreters of love, the crowns of poets, — 
they are the very crystallized breath of the muse of poetry' 
herself. We must not neglect the flowers — they are number 
tzvo. Then we have the fact of the appreciation of others — 
this we will express either directly in formulas of thanks- 
giving or indirectly in the mode of handling the other data so 
as to reflect the prevailing sentiment toward the subject. 
That is number three. Then there is the cane. The cane 
is in itself a thought-stimulating instrument. The cane is 
number four. However, knowing how the slightest sugges- 
tion is capable of expanding under the genial ray of fancy, I 
have strong reason to suspect that we shall not fully exploit 
our fourth item. Now let us see how we can weave all this 
into a bit of verbal tissue. Let us not lose sight of the amen- 
ities which must preside as the very muses of the occasion : 

Mr. X. : — ''As spokesman of the Committee of Thirty, in 
relation to whom you have borne so noble a part as patron, 
and active helper, it becomes my pleasant duty to bring you 
the heartfelt thanks of these your friends and admirers. 



Impromptu Speech. 147 

Strongly persuaded as we are of your native distaste for 
the role of hero in any ceremony, we yet felt that it was due 
you to acknowledge our deep sensibility to the peculiar 
beauty and value of your benefaction in this benighted sec- 
tion of our city. 

Until you came to us with the twin gift of your wisdom 
and your benevolence, the highest reach of philanthropy in 
dealing with these disinherited children of fortune was to 
feed; you divined that we ought to delight them. 

While hitherto relief parties had bethought themselves 
that the poor man had a stomach; }0u remembered that he 
had a soiiL 

■Where they brought bread to prolong a life that might 
seem hardly worth living, you supplied an element that en- 
hanced the value of that life itself. 

The tender paternity you have assumed towards our 
wretched proteges shines nowhere with brighter lustre than 
in its relation to the little ones ; and nowhere has the work 
reaped a richer harvest of salvation. 

Infant eyes starving for a sight of natural lovliness, re- 
sponded with touching eagerness to this simple aesthetic 
stimulus. The blossom in the child's hand awoke blossoms 
of emotion which still slumbered in the recesses of the infant 
consciousness ; and the little frame was swept by a thrill it 



148 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

had never known before. Flower called unto flower, and the 
soul of a child was born. 

But we have not met here to weary you with the enumer- 
ation of all the happy effects of your gracious enterprise. If 
they have been referred to at all, it was only to justify the 
tender of this cane which we pray you accept as a slight, a 
very slight token of our unbounded love and esteem. May 
it be a symbol of that moral support which is the most 
precious legacy of the past to him who is conscious of having 
actively and wisely 'loved his fellow-men.' 

Take it from us who love you and who pray with one 
voice that you may use it many years.'' 

It is, of course, an invidious task to present a specimen 
of one's inspiration to a class^ as it always seems to carry 
with it an assumption of peculiar excellence. This is not 
here the case. Examples are given here merely of the modes 
of the mind's operation with data which are determined for 
purposes of practice. Each man's imagination has, in details 
at least, its own mode of handling its material which is in- 
digenous to his own mind and consequently sacred. He must 
not alter it or pervert it in any way. He is, however, by 
every means, to seek improvement of his own style along 
the lines traced by nature and which soon become apparent 
to him, either through affinity or contrast, as he studies the 



Impromptu Speech. 149 

peculiarities of style of other men. He may even imitate 
renowned stylists in order to acquire symmetry, smoothness 
and elasticity in his own style which, in its essence, must 
continue the same. 

The one thing for which contention is made here, is that 
the imagination must be called into requisition, whether it 
take the form of grace, courtesy, fancy, wit or humor, 
or whether it blend them all. The great cry on the part of 
those who are inexpert in dealing with social situations 
which give scope to verbal skill is that they do not know 
what to do with their data even when that is determined. 
When we say verbal skill, it is well understood that the 
term has reference to the ultimate step of the process which 
is verbal. In origin and in essence, however, it is a compli- 
cated metaphysical operation, involving all the functions of 
the mind — perception, memory, reason, imagination and 
fancy. In fact, it is at its best a complete and brilliant 
psychical drama in which all the faculties play their ap- 
pointed roles and in which occasion serves as stage-manager. 
Now some people have by natural gift the power of rapidly 
combining their data into new and effective groups, a sort 
of mental prestidigitation which enables them to create ever 
new miracles out of old elements. Others have feeble power 



150 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

of representation and of imagination. They cannot carry in 
their heads lines of reasoning or light easily upon analogies 
between the different planes of phenomena. Their i>owers 
of association are not lively, one thing not readily suggesting 
another. The elements are apt to stagnate in their conscious- 
ness and refuse to move even when solicited to do so by 
opportunity. The one remedy is frequent exercise in this 
oral and verbal composition. The mind must be daily con- 
fronted with one of these thought and language problems, 
daily given new subjects, each representing a number of 
elements to be arranged and re-arranged. In this way the 
mind will acquire strength and dexterity, the power to deal 
more suggestively with its material and win ever new as- 
pects from its shifting groups. 

According to universal testimony, one of the trying situa- 
tions of club life is the necessity for responding to the honors 
of nomination or of election. While a very few command a 
gift of graceful readiness, a woeful majority confess them- 
selves worsted by the occasion. As for their expression of 
the predicament, there is a chorus of but one consecrated 
phrase, ^T can't think of anything to say,'' Now let us see 
what can be done for a person in this plight, a person so 
bereft of ideas that he has nothing to say on an occasion 



Impromptu Speech. 151 

which is of itself so very stimulating to thought and emo- 
tion. First let us consult the paramount oracle in all situa- 
tions, i. e., common sense. This points out that relevancy 
m_ust first be secured : the speech must be adapted to the 
occasion, that is, it must describe the thoughts and senti- 
ments of the speaker. Now this occasion is an event bring- 
ing honor and distinction to the one chosen and the emotions 
accompanying such an event must be those of pride, joy, 
elation, delight, and the like. The emotion of surprise may 
happen t© be superadded. In most minds there naturally 
succeeds an emotion of gratitude to those who have become 
the source of such pleasant experiences. Is it not likely that 
to a modest soul, the sensations of elation must soon give 
way to a sense of the responsibility incurred by the accept- 
ance of a new post of duty ? Sometimes the mind undergoes 
a complete revulsion under the new and often overwhelming 
sense of apprehension which comes over the ofificer-elect. 

Especially is this true when he remembers that the out- 
going president was particularly distinguished for efficiency. 
He begins to dread the idea of a iuture comparison and a 
sense of distrust begins to creep over him. . However, he re- 
flects that to yield to the temptation to decline the honors of 
office would seem a poor requital of the generous confidence 
of his friends. It would give him the appearance of trying 



152 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

to shirk. Therefore he accepts, but as courtesy demands that 
he should graciously recognize the value of the co-operation 
of the bulk of the members he assures them that if he con- 
sents to undertake the cares inseparable from that honorable 
post, it is only because he builds his hopes of success on their 
indulgence, encouragement and help. This may be accom- 
panied by praise of his predecessor. Now, it would seem 
that these injunctions contain principles of expression that 
are perfectly obvious; yet one has but to consult one's ex- 
perience and one remembers but few occasions in which one 
or more of these were not flagrantly violated or neglected. 

I recall in particular the occasion on which a superior 
woman was succeeded in the presidency of a club by an am- 
bitious and pretentious but distinctly inferior person who 
complacently made her address of acceptance without the 
slightest reference to her distinguished predecessor. The 
impression of ill-breeding and stupidity which such an 
egregious omission left was disastrous to the propriety of 
the scene and served as an effectual revelation of character. 

All these points together constitute a schedule of motives 
which are organic to the average case. The schedule may 
be employed in whole or in part, just as the features of the 
occasion dictate. Once more our motives are in their order : 



Impromptu Speech. 153 

I. Surprise. 

II. Sense of honor or distinction conferred. 

III. Gratitude. 

IV. Pleasure, joy, delight, etc. 

V. Alloyed by apprehension. 

VI. Responsibility great. 

VII. Ability of predecessor. 

VIII. Distrust own abilities 

IX. Inspired by fear — have temptation to decline. 

X. Think, however, this an unworthy step. 
XL Would not appear to shirk duty. 
XII. Trust in co-operation, etc. 

One has but to consider these motives, to see that there 
is always matter at hand on such an occasion, the only diffi- 
culty being with the subject who has not been accustomed 
to treat matters verbally. 

Let each select the motives which appear to him to arise 
naturally out of the situation and arrange tliem in order in 
simple and smooth language, and even though he miss posi- 
tive eloquence he cannot fail to come within the lines of pro- 
priety. And at first the student of social address must be 
content to achieve modest success. He will gradually learn 
to subdue that paralyzing self-consciousness which is the 



154 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

beginner's most formidable incubus. As he acquires control 
over his person, he gradually comes into command of his 
intellectual resources as well. His insight into the latent pos- 
sibilities of a subject increases ; then confidence in his ow^n 
powers is added unto him, and the miracle is complete. But 
precisely because the first step is so desperately hard to take, 
the anxious prospective speaker needs a little definite guid- 
ance even though this should appear rather stifif and stilted. 
It must be kept well in mind that this is but a bare skeleton 
or framework, like that which forms the foundation of every 
structure. It is bald and uncouth in itself but it is indispen- 
sable to the edifice contemplated. 

Let us look at the embodiment of a few of these motives : 
The following is the substance of an address once delivered 
in my presence by a gentleman who made no pretensions to 
oratory but who was a genial, intelligent man with an in- 
fallible sense of the apropos. 

''Ladies and Gentlemen : — Allow me to express my 
amazement at finding myself so suddenly elevated to the 
honors of office. I am not accustomed to underrate my per- 
sonal advantages, but on this occasion I confess that I am 
at a loss to determine to what particular trait I am indebted 
for this distinction. I trust that on one score at least historv 



Impromptu Speech. 155 

will not repeat itself for me. That is to say, I hope that 
tomorrow no guileless member of the nominating committee 
will throw a damper on my triumph by calmly volunteering 
the intelligence that they set me up because nobody else 
would consent to run. If you only agree to avert that, I 
will promise to see to it that you will never regret your 
choice. 

''My amazement I have confessed, my joy you see in my 
countenance, and my gratitude you may count upon. From 
this day forward my career will be one of the wildest vic- 
tory. I will feverishly scan the annals of this organization, 
fasten my aspiring glance upon the most striking exploit that 
emblazons its pages, and I solemnly swear to break the 
record. Trusting you will take my zeal in good part and 
crown it w4th your encouragement, I may say that I alreadv 
feel myself on the road to success.'' 

This is neither brilliant nor eloquent, but somehow^ it 
exactly fitted the occasion, the audience and the character 
and purpose of the organization. 

There is often a mystic and incalculable element in such 
occasions which seals its character for propriety and effect- 
iveness. The key missed^ everything is lost. The speaker 
must in some way get at the essence of the general attitude, 
key his thoughts up to it and keep en rapport with his 



156 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

audience throughout. His inspiration will then not fail of 
the right quality. In this instance the speaker and his audi- 
ence thought and felt exactly alike and that became very 
proper here which would have been utterly out of taste else- 
where. 

There are, to be sure, occasions where the language is 
serious de rigiietcr/m grand toilet, as it were^ and any admix- 
ture of levity would represent a false note. But as a rule, 
it may be said that an American is ever ready for a bit of 
humor. That is the note he likes to hear, the note that will 
atone for much lack of form. 

Another point is the quality of the humor. This must be 
adapted to the taste of the audience, which is to say, its 
degree of aesthetic refinement. In one stage of culture a 
mode of playfulness is agreeable, which in another would 
give positive offense. In the lower strata of society the 
simplest and coarsest horse-play suffices to produce the effect 
contemplated by nearly all expedients of mirth, namely, to 
put the audience in good humor and deepen and fortify its 
rapport or sympathy with the speaker. As one ascends the 
social ladder the tissue of pleasantry is woven with finer and 
closer threads; and in no phase of his initiative does an 
orator more certainly imperil his prosperity by a compara- 
tively slight lapse, than in jocularity. It is the faux pas 



Impromptu Speech. 157 

which precipitates a man headlong into the pit. The young 
student of popular favor will, therefore, do well to remember 
that an audience will often cheerfully overlook inappositive- 
ness of epithet, looseness of statement, lameness of logic and 
many other errors of discourse, but it will deeply resent the 
social classification implied in a clownish joke. 



REMARKS. 

A few remarks on the qualities of public address in gen- 
eral may not be amiss before concluding this part of our 
manual. 

The first requisite of any public address which aims at 
something more than merely meeting a slender social 
exigency, is method. By this is meant "a general plan for 
setting forth any branch of knowledge whatever ; a mode of 
arranging thoughts for investigation or exposition,'' 

The most salient feature of Method is classification. By 
this is understood the arrangement, for successive treatment, 
of the p^rts of a subject according to a heirarchy of rank or 
to a scale of importance determined by degree of generality. 
This is done for the purpose of employing the time and 
efifort of the investigator to the best advantage. 

In treating a subject, however, the ver}^ first thing to 
consider is the definition. It should bv no means be taken 



I Impromptu Speech. 159 

j for granted that this is sufficiently understood, as, owing to 

fan erroneous conception of the nature of the subject, the 

whole value of an address may be lost upon some one or 

more of the audience. A distinguished author asserts that 

; a due definition of terms would have effectually forestalled 

'■ most of the profitless discussions that are now being waged 

in art, science and letters. 

The unwary fancy that words are fixed symbols having 
in quality and degree one and the same value for all ; where- 
as one needs only to reflect that the word, love, belongs as 
much to the vocabulary of a prize-fighter as it does to that 
of Emerson and of Shelley, in order to appreciate the fact 
that a chasm may yawn between the maximum and the min- 
imum value of an abstract term. Hence the indispensability 
of introducing one's subject by an accurate definition. 

This exigency satisfied, we are ready for the classification 

or distribution of the parts of which the subject matter is 

composed. As one naturally sees first the trunk and the 

main branches of a tree, so the main principles of classifica- 

.' tion strike one before the lesser ones. 

Thus, if one we^e ambitious enough, like another syn- 
thetic philosopher, to take the whole universe (in its broad- 
est sense of the all) as material for treatment, he would be 



160 Art of Conversation and Impromptu Speech. 

likely immediately to see that this stupendous entity fell pri- 
marily into two divisions, the creator and the created. The 
created into organic and inorganic constituents ; the organic 
into animal and vegetable life; the animal into all the sub- 
divisions of Zoology, Protozoans, Radiates, Mollusks, Artic- 
ulates, Vertebrates; the Vertebrates comprise Mammal, 
Birds, Reptiles, Fishes; the Mammals include Man and 
Quadrupeds; Man, under the rubrics, structure, habits and 
habitations which his description would entail, etc., gradually 
unfolds to our view the whole circle of learned categories, — 
everything that could be thought of or named by man ; from 
astronomy to cookery, from theology to lace mending. Thus 
we see that the unity of the world is no mere phrase but a 
vital, undeniable fact. The phenomena we are most familiar 
with and even those which seem most trivial to us, are all 
capable of being referred to larger and ever larger genera 
or classes until we discover them to be bound by intimate and 
indestructible ties to the vast sum of things we call the 
universe. Every division and sub-division is capable of 
being brought down from large genera to single particulars, 
many of which range themselves as item^s in our humble, 
every-day environment. Under this aspect they take on a 
dignity which before they did not possess in our eyes. We 



iMPRoMrii' Speech. 161 

seem to grasp the revelation that nothing is insignificant; 
and that even the grain of dust beneath our feet is, equally 
with the most imposing phenomenon, one of the characters in 
that stupendous document which \^e call simply the world, 
but which is in reality the message of the Creator to the 
created, and which it is the problem of life to decipher. 

This conception of the world or tmiverse as a unit will be 
especially valuable as a means of rescuing us from a de- 
moralizing narrowness of view while engaged in the con- 
templation of any subject,, outlining, as it necessarily does, 
the humblest object of attention against the limitless canvas 
of the All. This gives one pre-eminently the sense of back- 
ground, of perspective, and one, in tackling a subject, insen- 
sibly seeks to establish a pedigree for it — to trace a chain of 
antecedents of which it is at once the latest term and modern 
representative. 

This is also called the historic sense and has received 
great development in the last few decades of our time. 

According to this mode of treatment one traces his sub- 
ject back to its earliest appearance on the stage of history 
and unearths its most rudimentary form, oftentimes through 
many varied and elusive metamorphoses. 

For example if a man have to give an address on Money 
in general, he will not be content with discussing the phe- 



162 Aht ok Conversation anu JMPROMprij Speech. 

nomenon merely under its present aspect, but will go as far 
back in time as human record can take him and detect its 
source in the most primitive analogical device, proceeding 
gradually with its modifications through the ages down to 
our own day. 

If Slavery is the subject to be treated it must be pro- 
ceeded with in the same manner; its origin in the dim past, 
its varying forms with the progress of the ages, its relations 
to war, to domestic, and political life, to mining, manufac- 
ture, agriculture, and colonization; its contributions to the 
establishment of caste, to the propagation of new religions 
and the influence of changes in its conditions upon political 
institutions and the whole political structure of society, etc., 
etc., must be carefully outlined and then developed with a 
fullness of detail proportioned to the contemplated scope of 
the address. A habit must be deliberately formed of looking 
at one's subject from all sides and exploiting its every as- 
pect. 

All these things, however, are supplied to the reader by 
already existing records and works. He has so far fur- 
nished nothing from his own store. His work has no origi- 
nality. A man's intellectual genius is notoriously measured 
by his power of modifying the material he takes in hand, 
w^hatever that may be. There is a very close analogy be- 



iMPROMFfu Speech. 163 

tweeii the mind and the stomach. As the latter m its normal 
condition is capable of infinitely modifying the matter in- 
gested, so has the former under the most favorable condi- 
tions of function an unlimited power of reshaping the mate- 
rial presented to it. However, a perfect mind is a far more 
rare phenomenon than a perfect stomach, rare as this is said 
to have become. But from the most highly developed faculty 
to the least, the graduations are infinite, as are likewise 
the degrees of plasticity of the mind, that is to say its capac- 
ity for development vmder training or experience. It not 
infrequently happens that an individual displaying at first 
very feeble power for combining and shaping, rapidly in- 
creases this power under training; whereas another who 
starts out with exceptional faculty makes little or no per- 
ceptible progress under training. It must be confessed, how- 
ever, that instances of this constitution are not so frequently 
met with as those of the former type ; and no man can tell 
what is in him until he has explored the territory of psychical 
function that is his. Now, in this field exploring means sub- 
jecting to exercise and discipline. 

In order to make any personal contribution to a subject 
the data of which has been mainly supplied by the research 
of others, it is necessary either to have fine natural parts, to 
have had oneself a great range of experience and observation 



]64 Art ok Connersation and iMrKoMPTi: Speech. 

in the same line, or to have a natural aptitude for intending* 
one's mind upon the object of thought and by skilfully corre- 
lating it with other ideas, of eliciting from it new concepts, 
new comments, new theories or new^ analogies. So that the 
student would do well to form the habit of brooding over his 
subject-matter, collating it with ever new elements so as, if 
possible, to establish valuable and hitherto unsuspected con- 
nections between them. 

It would be extremely difficult to explain in detail just 
how this is done. It is like a certain mode of breathing 
taught musical students for purposes of vocalization. It is in 
vain that the teacher explains, for some time you are unable 
even to approach the process required of you and you begin 
to despair. Your teacher, however, who has been through 
the mill herself, laughs and assures you that you have but to 
keep on trying and "it will come to you.'' Now this is per- 
fectly analogous to what happens to the student who reso- 
lutely applies himself to the mysteries of composition. He 
has but to dig away at daily exercise with his injunctions as 
steadily before his mind as the pillar of fire before the hosts ' 
of Israel in the Exodus. These daily studies are to be sup- ; 
plemented by at least one weekly exercise on the platform , 
before an audience composed of fellow-students. For all tlie { 
soHtarv studv in the world will not avail to give one the ] 



Impromptu Speech. 165 

ability to command one's rhetorical resources in an actual 
emergency. The function of the teacher is to train his pupil 
so that he may be able to meet the verbal exigencies of life 
with ready expedients. This training will include the word 
drill which has been outlined in ovir discussion of conversa- 
tion ; and especial attention to definiteness, accuracy and co- 
herency of statement is earnestly injoined as a prerequisite to 
success in the public enunciation of thought. 

It may not be an irrelevant conclusion to forestall here 
a number of questions which usually arise in the mind of 
the incipient student of speech. 

Is SLANG admissible in a public address or in conversa- 
tion? 

To this it may be briefly replied that slajig is by no means 
to be indiscriminately barred. The fact does not appear to 
be sufficiently appreciated that slang is of more than one 
type. It will suffice for our purpose to distribute slang- 
terms into two main classes of which one includes those 
words and phrases that have by some accident, error or 
' slovenliness of speech acquired an outrageous extension of 
meaning which in many cases is rendered even more ob- 
jectionable by the inherent vulgarity and irrelevance of the 
expression itself. Such a term is the word, rats! It is 
used by the ignorant and vulgar to show contempt for the 



166 Art of Conversation and Impromptu vSpeech. 

opinions, sentiments, or observations of their interlocutor. 
As it is used indiscriminately for every shade and degree 
of that emotion and is even extended so as to cover emo- 
tions of impatience, regret, disappointment and disgust, it is 
plain that far from being an expression at all, it is actually 
a device for evading the task of expression. Now, as verbal 
deficiency is already the curse of American culture at its 
best, the reader may judge whether it would have been pos- 
sible to hit upon a more effective means of riveting a social 
infirmity upon an unhappy people. It is to such libel upon 
speech that an illustrious countryman referred when he 
called slang ''the riotous medium of the underlanguaged/' 
Such an infraction of the decencies and proprieties of human 
utterance should not be tolerated in any case; and wdien it 
is further considered that it absolutely destroys the faculty 
of definite statement and discriminative epithet and phrase 
by the constant use of terms of such wide and misty gen- 
erality that they have become absolutely insignificant, the 
perils of such indulgence become painfully evident. An- 
other prolific source of verbal mutilation is the aw^kward 
habit w^hich some people have of overworking certain items 
of their vocabulary. Some misguided enthusiasts find 
everything ''grand,'' or "magnificent,'' or "splendid.'' The 
boarding-school girl sprinkles her conversation liberally 



iMPROMrru Speech. 167 

with ''lovety," ''heavenly/' ''sweet/' or "dear/' The dominie 
in "Guy Mannering/' who exclaimed, "prodigious!" on all 
occasions, in and out of season, is an eminent type of this 
class of blunderers. The word "nice," as used by the 
average person to indicate any mode of excellence w^hat- 
ever, to serve, that is, as a general term of advantage, has 
probably done more harm to American culture than even 
the most sagacious dream of. Such w^ords are emphati- 
cally pests. They are indeed "rats !" for they are the very 
vermin of language and should be summarily routed. Young 
people who respect themselves should show reverence for 
their mother tongue as the august medium of their intellect- 
ual and spiritual life. They should make it a point of honor 
to make use of such terms only as distinctly characterize the 
object to which they are applied. The language must fit 
the thought as the man's vestment fits his body. The con- 
tempt with which we should cover him who would be so 
neglectful of public decency as to go about in a gunny sack, 
belongs equally to the slovenly speaker who does not deem 
his thoughts worthy of being clothed in properly fitting gar- 
ments of language, but flings over them the first loose, out- 
worn or insignificant phrase he finds lying at hand. 

But all slang terms do not come under this category. 
The other class into which we distributed them is of a far 



lf>S Aki oi Con vRRSATiox ani> Imi'Rompti Spepxii. 

less reprehensible type than that we have just discussed. 
Indeed^ it includes a class of phrases which are at times 
to be recommended for their imaginative qualities. They 
constitute oftentimes a vivid picture and tend greatly to 
relieve the blankness of an abstract statement by introducing 
into it the element of the concrete. They are homely tropes 
or flowers of rhetoric and have the merit of supplyig orna- 
ment under its least pretentious guise. *T felt I was up 
against a new game/^ ''You are barking up the wrong 
tree/' "They'll kick," "Spin a yarn," "He's half seas over," 
and other similar idioms may properly be called slang (or 
cant) because they illustrate the extension to general par- 
lance of phrases that were originally technical to a particular 
walk of life. Even in the case of these latter it must be 
confessed that while they possess force and picturesqueness, 
they do not strictly characterize. They are really the poetry 
of conversation and narrative, because, like poetry, they 
suggest, whereas true prose proceeds by actual statement. 
Therefore, though they may be considered as the legitimate, 
occasional refreshment of a mind weary of abstraction, they 
should not be allowed too often to trench upon the province 
of more definite predication. 

To what an extent is QUOTATION allowable? This is 
one of those questions which each man is tempted to answer 



Impromftt Speech. 169 

according to his temperament. The present writer is in- 
clined rather to discourage the practice. In the hands of 
the unwary it is apt to become a disintegrating force, by 
forestalling both thought and expression. As Hudibras 

"Could not ope 
His mouth but out there flew a trope." 

So some people can hardly embark on a train of thinking 
but other people's thoughts and experiences come flocking 
to the fore court of their consciousness clamoring for rec- 
ognition and usurping the field of original thought. De 
Quincey caustically stigmatizes a certain individual as one 
whose mind w^as constantly ''infested with rags and tags of 
verse.'' On the whole it is probably the wiser part to eschew 
quotations unless, like good poetry, they are inevitable, that 
is irresistibly suggested by the matter in hand. Where the 
practice is not the mark of mental feebleness and diffusive- 
ness already existing, constant addiction to it soon becomes 
the source of these untoward conditions. It is indispensable 
to the best achievement that one should first learn to use his 
own mind instead of superseding or forestalling mental pro- 
cess by the use of the products of other men's faculty. 

What is the legitimate role of the ANECDOTE in pub- 
lic speaking ? 



170 x\RT of CoNVfCKSATION AND ImPROMPTI' SpEKCH. 

The intrcxliiction of the anecdote is another mode of 
supplying the much needed element of the concrete in the 
rather dry region of that abstract statement which forms 
the staple of exposition. But it must be promptly added 
that those who resort to anecdote as an expedient of illustra- 
tion do not all handle it with equal felicity. The apposite- 
ness, the vivacity and force of this device in the hands of 
certain speakers amounts to genius while at the touch of 
others their effect seems in some inexplicable manner to dis- 
solve and vanish. Of the anecdote it may be said in general, 
as of the quotation, that it is best when inevitable — when 
the proposition just enunciated bears such striking analogy 
to it that it seems of its own accord to spring from the cham- 
bers of memory and to range itself by natural affinity to the 
abstract truth to which it bears a vital connection. The study 
of the speeches of Lincoln would no doubt afford much light 
on the mode of handling this most effective expedient of 
rhetoric. 

The concluding words of this chapter will be devoted to 
a consideration of the time-limits of an address. These are 
regulated either organically or arbitrarily. That is to say 
that the speaker may impose his own limits or they may be 
imposed upon him by others. The organic limits will be 
those which the nature of the subject and the scope of dis- 



Imfromptl; Speech, 171 

cussion naturally dictate. These, however, must also to 
some extent be regulated by the character and temper of 
the audience. No speaker can afford to weary his hearers; 
he must be on the alert to detect signs of wavering attention, 
in which case he must either shorten his performance or by 
some legitimate oratorical device refresh their jaded spirits. 
Insensibility to the mental moods and conditions of his audi- 
ence is the unpardonable sin of the orator who usually pays 
the penalty for it by the disasters of a brief and inglorious 
career. 

Another and, if possible, a more unpardonable form of 
insensibility is that of the speaker who oversteps the time 
limits inexorably fixed by the schedule of a program. Such 
a person becomes by such an act guilty of a social outrage 
too flagrant to admit of being adequately characterized on 
a page which acknowledges the restraining sway of courtesy. 
To take even five minutes more time than is allowed you 
is to rob someone else of that much of his privilege who has 
either to curtail his (no doubt already short) speech so as 
absolutely to disfigure it beyond the possibility of delivery 
or to encroach upon his successor's time, who in turn has 
to trench upon his, and so on in a vicious circle of invasion 
and confusion which not unfrequently suffices to wreck the 
entertainment. 



ITJ Aki of Conversation and Impromfii; Spekcii. 

When once one accepts an invitation to speak where a 
number of others display their talent, it is indispensable to 
observe the tim^-limits attached to the address. Any trans- 
gression of them betrays ignorance of the etiquette of such 
an occasion, inexpertness in laying out, and planning the 
scope of one's address, or a gross insensibility to the claim^ 
of others. This last is an especially unhappy feature of the 
case, because a public speaker in a greater or less degree 
sets up as a public teacher ; and how can he be credited with 
valuable doctrines w^ho shows himself deficient in the pri- 
mary social intuitions ? 



For Lectures 

ON 

CONVERSATION 

AND 
IMPROiMFTU SPEECH 



AND 



For Formation of Classes by 

Personal Management or 

Correspondence, address 



Social Culture Publishing Co. 

CHICAGO, ILL. 



031 .< 1902 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 

lililll* 



029 788 991 6 











H 




i 1 
1' 


t ii 


H 






li 


w& 




h 


t! \\ 1 



■ 




li i 


^^^^H 




In'' 


H 







ill 



















ifilli 




\''' ''''■'''''"'-' 




hmmmm\;i\ 












